The Flag Ship: Or A Voyage Around the World, in the United States Frigate Columbia; Attended by Her Consort The Sloop of War John Adams, and Bearing the Broad Pennant of Commodore George C. Read.

Taylor, Fitch Waterman. By Fitch Waterman Taylor, Chaplain to the Squadron. [Two Volumes] New.York: D. Appleton & Co., 1840.
  • 1838-39 American Circumnavigation (aboard Columbia commanded by George Campbell Read).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 154-55: Previous to our leaving the harbour of Rio de Janeiro, I preached in the English chapel. The congregation was very respectable. The English chaplain who has charge of the congregation, and the chaplain of the Stag [a Brazilian naval ship], were present—the former reading the service.

Explorers Club Archives I

  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, EC2007-07

Copy-book of Letters Outward &c. begins…. 1679-1694.

Hudson’s Bay Company. Edited by E. E. Rich. (Toronto: Champlain Society, 1948). [Hudson’s Bay Record Society, v. 11].
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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This is a large and impressive compilation from the London office of the Company in London to Company officials in Lord Rupert’s land during the early years of the Company. The period includes the brief French capture of the Prince of Wales Fort at Churchill.

“Caxtons of the North: Mid Nineteenth-century Arctic Shipboard Printing”

Hoag, Elaine. Book History 4 (2001) 81-114.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 109, footnote 39: The catalogue of the Resolute library appears in the first issue (June 1850) of the Aurora Borealis, one of the manuscript newspapers produced on that voyage. The issue is held in the Edward Newell Harrison papers, MS/75/061, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The catalogue was not reproduced in Arctic Miscellanies, the publication that reprinted selections from the Aurora Borealis after the crew returned home to England. The catalogue of the library on Belcher’s Assistance was actually printed on board ship: A Catalogue of the Library Established on Board H.M.S.Assistance, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B. Commanding the Arctic Squadron in Search of Sir John Franklin and His Companions: Printed and published on Board H.M.S.Assistance, Wellington Channel, Arctic Regions, H. Briantt, Printer, 1853. (1853). A copy of this catalogue is held in the Royal Geographical Society Library bound with other pamphlets concerning the Arctic donated by John Barrow Jr. and given the binder’s title: Arctic Pamphlets, 1852-54.

Arctic Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape.

Lopez, Barry. New York, Bantam Books, 1987.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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This is simply one of the best-written books of Arctic history and description: This is a land where airplanes track icebergs the size of Cleveland and polar bears fly down out of the stars. It is a region, like the desert, rich with metaphor, with adumbration. In a simple bow from the waist before the nest of the horned lark, you are able to stake your life, again, in what you dream. (Preface, p. xxix.)

A Year in Space: A Lifetime of Discovery.

Kelly, Scott and Margaret Lazarus Dean. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2017. Review by Jaroslav Kalfar in New York Times Book Review(Dec. 10, 2017) p. 29.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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After comparison to Tom Wolfe’s The Right Stuff as an influence on the author: Another noted inspiration is the book after which Kelly named his own, and which he carries with him on multiple voyages to the International Space Station: “Endurance,” by Alfred Lansing, about Ernest Shackleton’s historic expedition to the South Pole, during which his crew cheated death after their ship became trapped in a polar pack ice, overcoming 850 miles of heavy seas on small lifeboats [not true] … Lansing’s account is a stark reminder that along with the rock-star image of the explorer comes the omnipresent specter of death. …

A Personal Narrative of the Discovery of the North-West Passage…while in Search of the Expedition under Sir John Franklin.

Armstrong, Alexander. (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1857).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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The Voyage of Investigator, with Capt. McClure, which separated from its consorts early in the trip, and struck off independently “with a firm reliance on a merciful Providence, and full confidence in our resources” (p. 74). Armstrong was the surgeon and naturalist aboard the Investigator.

Gilded Youth: Three Lives in France’s Belle Epoque

Cambor, Kate. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009.
  • 1908-10 Second French South Polar Expedition (Charcot on Pourquoi-pas?).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Focuses on three notable children of famous French families: Jeanne Hugo (granddaughter of Victor Hugo), Jean-Baptiste Charcot (son of neurologist Jean-Martin Charcot), and Leon Daudet (son of Alphonse). Chapter 8 “The Heiress and the Polar Gentleman” concerns Jean-Baptiste Charcot, his two Antarctic voyages, and his much later death by drowning off Iceland. Cambor makes about 15 relatively minor mistakes in the Charcot chapter, enough to wonder about other less-familiar parts of the book.

Hunting with the Eskimos: The Unique Record of a Sportsman’s Year among the Northernmost Tribe….

Whitney, Harry. New York: Century Co., 1910.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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Whitney traveled with Peary to Greenland in 1908 and spent the year only with Eskimos north of Etah at Annootok, while Peary was making his north pole attempt. Whitney is the complete hunter, rich and well-provided, and demonstrates some intellectual curiosity about the natives and about the natural resources, and does try to master their language, but he evidently reads little except under the duress of prolonged inactivity.

Looking both ways: Heritage and Identity of the Alutiq People.

Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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p. 60-61: “Forgotten Literacy” by Lydia Block: Literacy in the Alutiq language developed in the early 19th century thanks to Russian American schools, parish and secular (1741-1867). Some youth were taken to Okhotsh and Irkutsz in Siberia and a school started in Kodiak by monks of the First Mission. A text of the Lord’s Prayer in Alutiq survives (printed 1816); a Catechism of 1847; also a primer and Gospel of St Matthew (parallel Alutiq and Slavonic, printed in St Petersburg in 1848).

The Life of Captain James Cook.

Beaglehole, John C. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974.
  • 1768–79 British Naval Expeditions of Captain James Cook.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This biography together with Beaglehole’s five-volume edition of Cook’s Journals constitute the definitive source on Cook’s voyages and work.