p. 43-4: Research work was planned in magnetism, geology, botany, and zoology, and all the necessary instruments were supplied. Great importance was attached to magnetic observations, for the taking of which an elaborate and very comprehensive outfit was provided. Colonel Sabine gave special instruction in magnetism to several of the officers. Furthermore, a library was supplied to each ship, the one in the Terror comprised twelve hundred volumes, and the one in the Erebus was probably at least as large—Commander Fitzjames described it as a ‘very capital library’. The books included not only those in the ‘Seamen’s Library’ ordinarily issued to every ship, but also technical treatises on the management of steam engines, narratives of previous Arctic expeditions, geographical journals, and some lighter literature, such as Pickwick Papers, Nicholas Nickleby, The Ingoldsby Legends, Charles O’Malley, and volumes of Punch. Seventy slates, slate pencils, two hundred pens, ink, paper, and some ‘Common Arithmetic’ books, were supplied expressly for use in the schools which Sir John Franklin intended to hold for the men during the winter months. He was very anxious that every man should be adequately supplied with devotional works, and shortly before he sailed requested the Admiralty to furnish a hundred Bibles, Prayer Books, and Testaments, for sale on board the ships at cost price to all who applied for them. The Admiralty took immediate steps to comply with this request, but friends and various societies presented so many religious books that those furnished by the Admiralty were not needed and were, therefore, returned.
Sir John Franklin’s Last Arctic Expedition: The Franklin Expedition; A Chapter in the History of the Royal Navy
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
The Polar Regions, Or a Search after Sir John Franklin’s Expedition…
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
This deals with the 1850 Franklin search by the Intrepid and Pioneer, in company with Resolute and Assistance, with Osborn as Commander of the Pioneer. "Account, by the commander of the "Pioneer", one of the tenders to the Resolute and Assistance, of the Franklin search expedition under Capt. H. T. Austin: the voyage by Baffin Bay, Lancaster Sound, Barrow Strait, the wintering at Griffith Island, and return. Includes informative notes on West Greenland Eskimos, negotiating the ice of northern Baffin Bay, ice conditions in the Canadian Arctic waters, hunting adventures, clothing, food and equipment (for sledge journeys and otherwise), carrier pigeons, the sledge journeys, arctic nature and winter recreations." (Description on ABEBooks)
The Whaling Industry; Exhibition of Objects Illustrating the Whaling Industry and the Natural History of Whales … List of Essex County Whaling Vessels. List of Pictures of Whaling Vessels in the Marine Room. List of Log-books of Whaling Vessels in the Library of the Essex Institute. List of Books on Whales and Whaling in the Salem Public Library …
- Whalemen's Reading
German Exploration of the Polar World. A History, 1870-1940.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
p. 46, Karl Koldewey’s Germania sailed with the Hansato Greenland in June 1869, but soon the ships parted. Hard to know which fared the worse. The Hansa sank. Aboard the Germania: Confinement, tension, isolation, darkness, and the exhausting routine of physical labor gradually erode group morale. The psychological health of the men had not been neglected when planning the expedition, and efforts were made to supply healthy diversions. A newspaper was attempted (as would be the case later with subsequent German expeditions to Greenland, but it “died of neglect” after five issues.
Igloo for the Night.
- 1938 Hudson Bay Voyage of Nascopie.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
R.M.S. Nascopiewas the chief supply ship of the Hudson’s Bay Company with 34 annual visits to Northern Arctic outposts coming through Hudson Strait from the UK until 1933 when it was reassigned to Montreal.
The North-West Passage by Land. Being the Narrative of an Expedition from the Atlantic to the Pacific, Undertaken with the View of Exploring a Route across the Continent to British Columbia through British Territory, by One of the Northern Passes in the Rocky Mountains.
- 1862-64? British Private Overland Expedition in Search of North-West Passage by Land.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
A very curious, almost quixotic account of a couple of aristocratic travelers seeking an overland route to the gold fields of British Columbia.
Lands Forlorn: A Story of an Expedition to Hearne’s Coppermine River.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 45-46, on finding two dead bodies, a dirty note-book, and some carbolic acid: The stench was insufferable, worse than any other form of decomposing animal matter, and blended with it was the peculiarly acrid smell of old smoke from spruce fires. One could remain in that loath some atmosphere only a few minutes at a time; the bodies were in a state of decomposition so advance that it was necessary to break the bunks down and carry them out as they lay. Close to the house on that pleasant point we buried them both in one grave, dug as deep as the frozen ground permitted.
Bentley Historical Library Archives: Carlton Frank Wells Papers, File 1-53-A, Box 14, folder 14
- Arctic Reading: United States
Wells was a Michigan professor of English who corresponded extensively with Rawlins about Rawlins’ very critical Peary book: Peary and the North Pole: Fact or Fiction (1973).
Ship’s Libraries; Their Need and Usefulness.
- Whalemen's Reading
p. no page: After you’ve done everything to assure the physical and spiritual welfare of the sailor, “the only way left to reach him is by the printed truth—The Bible, the tract, the good book. Just here then comes in the ship’s library with its indispensable offices,--the last important advance made in the line of religious work among seamen,--the ‘missing link,’ I think we may call it, in the chain of evangelical agencies for their benefit.”
To the Pacific and Arctic with Beechey: The Journal of Lieutenant George Peard of H.M.S. ‘Blossom’
- 1825-28 British Voyage to Pacific Northwest to Meet Captain Franklin at the Bering Straits.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
George Peard, the first lieutenant of the Blossom, gives detailed descriptions of the places visited and the inhabitants, among them Pitcairn Island and the Gambier, Tahitian and Hawaiian groups. No less valuable are his accounts of Kamchatka, California, the Northwestern extremity of North America, and various parts of South America. Peard had an inquisitive, scientific mind, and he wrote a clear discursive narrative which shows that British exploration in the early Pax Britannica bore many fruits - scientific, commercial and strategic. It also showed that the Northwest passage had again eluded the British, in spite of the careful planning of the Admiralty, the Colonial office and the Hudson's Bay Company and the painstaking execution of orders by such naval officers as Parry, Franklin, Beechey and Peard himself. Two of the plates are now printed at the end of the book. [Description from Google Books, 10/7/17.]
Peary: The Explorer and the Man. Based on His Personal Papers.
- 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole.
- Arctic Reading: United States
DCS notes elsewhere some common facets of explorers lives: depressives, loners, readers, and writers. Ambitious.
Five Years Before the Mast, Or Life in the Forecastle, Aboard of a Whaler and Man of War.
- Whalemen's Reading
An actual 1837 Atlantic trip aboard a Sag Harbor whaler told in fictional form, illustrated with woodcuts. Well-disguised fictional account of sailors’ life, near-mutiny and desertion, etc. The hero is a novel reader (see p. 61-2, 92, 139), and the author an accomplished writer.
Antarctica: A Year at the Bottom of the World.
- 1982-96 American Antarctic Program Expeditions.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
A composite one-man account of winterovers from 1982 to 1996 combing a dozen trips into one narrative. There are a few content-free references to the McMurdo library—it seems obvious he didn’t use it often. Mastro served as a photo-journalist and the book includes some extraordinary photographs.
Bartlett, the Great Canadian Explorer.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 15, Bartlett used the American Pilot to learn about Herald Island.
A Visit to the South Seas, in the U.S. Ship Vincennes, During the years 1829 and 1830; with Scenes in Brazil, Peru, Manila, the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena.
- 1829-30 US Circumnavigation (W.C.B. Finch aboard USS Vincennes).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Stewart was in effect the missionary narrator of this somewhat odd circumnavigation in that it didn’t intend circling the globe until it was already on the Pacific Coast. He began on a different ship and then joined the round the world cruise aboard the Vincennes at Callao, Peru, on July 29th. [Note: there are variant editions of this work, with differing dates and paginations. The Google version of Vol. I does not indicate date but maybe 1832 rather than the first.