Ice Bound: A Doctor’s Incredible Battle for Survival at the South Pole.

Nielsen, Jerri. New York: Hyperion, 2001.
  • 1998-99 South Pole Winterover (NSF) at Amundsen-Scott Base.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This book created considerable controversy by the author going public with her medical condition, despite commitments not to call for special services in case of serious illness. Her cancer was the cause.

Ned Myers; Or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. New Edition. Edited by J. Fenimore Cooper. Two Volumes. New York: Stringer and Townsend, 1854. [First published in 1840.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An 1840 Cooper work in which he served as amanuensis in telling the narrative of Ned Evans attempting to “lay before the world the experience of a common seaman,” such as Cooper himself knew, and which follows that pattern of degradation and conversion. I confess to an early impression that the work was more novel than narrative, and it certainly is an hybrid genre of edited narrative, or a semi-imaginary reconstruction. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

First on the Antarctic Continent, Being an Account of the British Antarctic Expedition 1898-1900

Borchgrevink, Carsten E. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1980 [Reprint 1901].
  • 1898–1900 British Antarctic Expedition (Carsten Borchgrevink on Southern Cross).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Borchgrevink comes across as a sanctimonious sycophant, at least at the beginning, full of himself and his role in “the world’s history.” For contrast from an antagonist, see Louis Charles Bernacchi who detested Borchgrevink. Pretty clear that this is one of those self-serving travel accounts which conceals the depths of animosity that developed within his staff.

English Writings about the New World,

Maclaren, I. S. in History of the Book in Canada. Volume 1. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004. p. 33-.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. 38: At least by the nineteenth century, most expeditions of exploration considered a well-stocked library an essential component of their cargo. Obviously, those in ships could afford a greater tonnage; just how many men on Franklin’s two land expeditions hauled books and charts over portages and across the tundra remains a nice question. Certainly, when the first expedition was reduced in the fall of 1821 to a straggling line of men marching back from Bathurst Inlet to the hoped-for refuge of Fort Enterprise, a copy of Samuel Hearne’s A Journey from the Prince of Wales’s Fort, in Hudson’s Bay, to the Northern Ocean, the only book then available about the region, remained part of the load. The party of twenty men lost their way more than once. Were they consulting the charter in the inferior but lighter-weight octavo edition of Hearne’s book, issued in Dublin in 1796? It would have made a more logical traveling companion than the larger quarto first edition (London, 1795). Yet the map in the octavo showed Hearne’s return route across the Barrens differently from the first edition’s map. The discrepancy could have confused Franklin, whose men suffered more than one delay, and contributed to the number of deaths. Certainly, the matter of a book’s size bears materially on this dramatic possibility.

Andrée’s Story: The Complete Record of his Polar Flight, 1897. From the diaries and journals….

Translated from the Swedish by Edward Adams-Ray. New York: Viking Press, 1960.
  • 1897 Swedish Polar Flight Attempt (commanded by Solomon Andrée).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

In the diaries and journals of the three participants there is little or nothing on the materials they had with them except mention of their logbooks. On the other hand, the following accounts of the discovery of the men’s remains and artifacts show some interesting discoveries.

The Yankee Tar. An Authentic Narrative of the Voyages and Hardships of John Hoxse, and the cruises of the U.S. Frigate Constellation, …

Hoxse, John. Written by Himself. With an Extract from the Writings of Rev. John Flavel. Northampton: MA: John Metcalf, for the Author, 1840.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. 7, introducing what must have been one of the first author publicity tours: Having got this work up in a handsome style, and at a great expense, I have concluded to make a tour through the principal towns in this and the adjoining states, and to call personally upon every individual who may wish to purchase one of the books, that all who do this, may rest assured there is no imposition; for it would be a hard task for aany person to counterfeit my

Frozen Ships: The Arctic Diary of Johann Miertsching, 1850-1854.

Miertsching, Johann. Translation and introduction by L. H. Neatby. New York: St. Martin’s Pres, 1967.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Quite a riveting account of the Investigator Franklin search expedition by a German Moravian minister, pious but human, who was assigned primarily as an interpreter. His reading naturally centers around scripture and tracts, but he has a healthy interest in most shipboard doings.

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
 Preview 

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.

Antarctica’s First Lady.

Ronne, Edith M. (Jackie). Beaumont, TX: Clifton Seaport Museum, 2004.
  • 1946-48 Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Primarily an account of the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition of 1947-48 in which she accompanied her husband. Based largely on her diaries of that period, she is a staunch defender of Ronne’s leadership, dismissing his critics as merely bitching about his more disciplined Norwegian regimen. The complaints are taken as inevitable and nothing was done to contain them, here or on his later IGY expedition. There is nothing here about reading, even in her chapter on the long winter night where one usually finds some mention of antidotes to boredom. What a contrast to Walton’s book below.

War, Ice & Piracy: The Remarkable Career of a Victorian Sailor. The Journals and Letters of Samuel Gurney Cresswell.

Cresswell, Samuel Gurney. Edited by Dominick Harrod. (London: Chatham Publishing, 2000).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Cresswell was a Royal naval officer aboard both the James Clark Ross and Robert McClure expeditions of the Franklin Search, and can claim to be the first to cover the entire Northwest Passage. He was also a notable water-colourist of these expeditions. The letters reproduced here are primarily to his Parents.