Under Ice: Waldo Lyon and the Development of the Arctic Submarine.

Leary, William M. College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 1999.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 149, on scattering of ashes of Hubert Wilkins at North Pole from the submarine Skate: While two men held red flares, Calvert [commander of Skate] read from the Book of Common Prayer, then paid a personal tribute to Wilkins….

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled: A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska.

Stuck, Hudson. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1914.
  • 1913-18 US Private Journeys round the Coast and Interior of Alaska (Hudson Stuck, “Archbishop of the Yukon”).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 77: The division of the labour of camping amongst four gave us all some leisure at night, and I found time to read through again The Cloister and the Hearth and Westward Ho! with much pleasure, quite agreeing with Sir Walter Besant’s judgment that the former is one of the best historical novels ever written. There are few more attractive roysterers in literature to me than Denys of Bergundy, with his “Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!” This matter of winter reading is a difficult one, because it is impossible to carry many books. My plan is to take two or three India-paper volumes of classics that have been read before, and renew my acquaintance with them. But reading by the light of one candle, though it sufficed our forefathers, is hard on our degenerate eyes.

The Polar Regions.

Debenham, Frank. London: E. Benn, 1930.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 32ff. Chapter III on Polar Travel is a brief history of polar exploration, citing Frobisher, Hudson, Barents, Spitsbergen Dutch whalers, Franklin, “Parry, McClintock, Kane, Greely, Nansen, Peary, and Koch, while the Antarctic has its own list including the names of Ross, Scott, Shackleton, Amundsen, Mawson, and Nordenskiöld” (p. 36).

‘Birdie’ Bowers of the Antarctic

Seaver, George. With an Introduction by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. London: John Murray, 1938.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Like Seaver’s biography of Wilson, his fellow death-mate, this is a gentle hagiography of a devout Christian and a much-loved mate. On his training ship he would sit on the main deck every evening “before the whole ship’s company,” and read his Bible for a quarter of an hour (p. 22). I found nothing else about his reading during the Terra Nova expedition, but earlier he speaks of reading and thinking a lot in his spiritual quest (p. 40), of his prayer book, and his “violent attack of skepticism” from reading Darwin’s Descent of Man (p. 47), and this in Ceylon in 1909: “I have brought my Wordsworth up here and read it a bit in my room at night, keeping one eye aloft for spiders, one of which fell on me the other night” (p. 119). He was phobic about spiders.

Griffith Taylor: Visionary Environmentalist Explorer.

Strange, Carolyn and Alison Bashford. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 2008.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Taylor was born in England but went to Australia at age 12, where he was a student of Edgeworth David, before studying in Cambridge 1907-09 (Emmanuel College). This biography presents him as a brilliant scientist but irascible, vain glorious, and sometimes mean-spirited. A geologist turned geographer he became an ardent geographic determinist, seeing both nature and man determined by their natural environment. He went on the Terra Nova expedition with Scott, and wrote about it in his With Scott: the Silver Lining, the silver lining being the scientific accomplishments of the expedition.

The Clipper Ship Era: An Epitome of Famous American and British Clipper Ships, Their Owners, Builders, Commanders, and Crews 1843-1869.

Clark, Arthur H. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1912.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 29, on ships of East India Company: On Sunday mornings the crew was mustered and inspected by the chief officer, and then assembled for Divine service, which was read by the commander, as the Court of Directors required the captains “to keep up the worship of Almighty God, under a penalty of two guineas for every omission not satisfactorily accounted for in the log-book.”

Sea of Glory: America’s Voyage of Discovery. The U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842.

Philbrick, Nathaniel. New York: Viking, 2003.
  • 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 11, when in 1821 Charles Wilkes was assigned to the Franklin for a cruise to the Pacific: The Franklin proved to be just the ship for an officer of Wilkes’s interests. On the gun deck there was a library, and Wilkes, with the help of an assistant became the librarian.

The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas 1819-1821

Bellingshausen, Thaddeus von. 2 vols. Trans. from the Russian. Edited by Frank Debenham. London: Hakluyt Society, 1945.
  • 1819-21 First Russian Antarctic Expedition commanded by Captain Thaddeus Bellingshausen (aboard Vostok and Mirny).
  • “Discovery” of Antarctica.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Only a fraction of Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin Bellingshausen’s (aka Thaddeus, 1778-1852) long career in the Russian Navy was devoted to Antarctic exploration, his two-year expedition exploring Antarctic in 1819-21. It was nonetheless a notable venture as the second circumnavigation of the continent (the first was by Captain Cook in 1773-74), and the first actual sighting of the Continent in January 1820. His discovery of Alexander Island and the naming of the Bellingshausen Sea were not much honored in Russia since they were of little immediate practical use, but his achievements are now much more fully recognized, At least as translated and then edited in this version, Bellingshausen appears to have an easy-going if formal style of writing and shows himself to be a most judicious man in both his navigation and his leadership of the voyage, a character much doubted by his critics.

With the ‘Aurora’ in the Antarctic 1911-1914.

Davis, John King. Introduction by Beau Riffenburgh. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 2007.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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First published in 1919. One of three books based on Davis’s journals, this one of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition is primarily about navigation and seamanship, and very little about other human activities or amusements for diversion. The concluding paragraphs of his “L’Avenir” have the most human touch:

Secrets of Polar Travel.

Peary, Robert E. New York: Century, 1917.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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A chapter on winter quarters describes lodges he built for wintering in Greenland.

Interview

Ronne, Edith M. (Jackie). From her Interview with Brian Shoemaker, 20 July 2000.
  • 1946-48 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This is Jackie describing Harry Darlington's mother: She was trying to convey something to us and we just didn't realize it at the time [that she disapproved of Harry and Jennie going to Antarctica]. She later sent money. I think she sent $250 worth of books for our library on the trip and asked us not to mention it to Harry. Harry was estranged from his mother at the time, which we did not know.

Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador.

Chappell, Edward. London: J. Mawman, 1818.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 70-71, recounting Chappell’s conversation with an Indian hunter: whilst with the other he laid down his musket upon the trunk of a fallen tree. We offered him rum, which, to our utter astonishment, he refused; but he accepted of some biscuit and boiled pork. The following conversation then ensued between us. We first inquired, where he was going, and at what he had fired. “Me go get salmon gut, for bait, for catchee cod. Me fire for play, at litteel bird.” Observing the word Tower marked on the lock of his musket, we said, "This is an English gun." "May be. Me no get um "of Ingeles; me get um of Scotchee ship: me "givee de Captain one carabou(deer)for um."—" Do you go to-morrow to catch cod?" "Ees: me go to-morrow catchee cod: next day, catchee cod: next day comeseven day (Sunday); me no catchee cod; "me takee *, look upGOD." [Footnote p. 71: * None of the Indians in St. George's Bay are able to read; but they have been taught almost to adore the Bible, by some French Missionary.] We asked if the savage Red Indians, inhabiting the interior of the country, also looked up toGOD: when, with a sneer of the most ineffable contempt, he replied, "<i>No; no lookee upGOD: killee all men dat dem see, "Red Indian no good."—Do you understand the talk of the Red Indians?" "Oh, no; me no talkee likee dem: dem talkee all same dog, 'Bow, wow, wow!'"This last speech was pronounced with a peculiar degree of acrimony: at the same time, he appeared so much offended at our last question, that we did not think it prudent to renew the dialogue.

The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, in Search of a Passage to Cathay and India by the North-West, A.D. 1576-78.

Best, George. Two volumes in one. Edited by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. (London: Argonaut Press, 1938).
  • 1576-78 The Baffin Island Voyages of Martin Frobisher.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. cii-ciii, re the first voyage: The ship’s library included two works of André Thevet, the French royal geographer, his Cosmography, in French, which had been published only the previous year, and his Singularités de l’Amérique, both in French and in the English translation of 1568, by Thomas Hackett, under the title The New found World or Antarctike. It included William Cunningham’s Cosmographical Glasse, published in 1559, which, to quote Professor Taylor, ‘contains little of purely geographical interest, but is notable for its exposition and illustration of the method of survey by triangulation….’ This volume and Dr Record’s Castle of Knowledge, 1556 (‘containing the explication of the sphere’), which they also took along, ‘were certainly adequate reference books for such astronomy and mathematical geography as was necessary to understand the principles of these various instruments’ (i.e. Cole’s instruments). As they took Medina’s Arte de Naviguar in the original it is to be presumed that the Master could read Spanish. The only English work included was Mandeville, ‘presumably for the sake of its account of the Far East, which was the ultimate goal of the expedition’. They also took ‘a Bible Englishe great volume’, possibly Richard Jugge’s Bishop’s Bible of 1572.