The Substance of a Journal during a Residence at the Red River Colony British North America: and Frequent Excursions among the North West American Indians….

West, John. Second Edition. London: L. B. Seele, 1827.
  • 1820-23 British Chaplain Residence at Red River Colony.
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

West was “Late Chaplain to the Hon. The Hudson’s Bay Company” visiting various Forts of the HBC, but mainly serving as chaplain and missionary to the natives at the Red River Colony..

The Last Place on Earth

Huntford, Roland. New York, Modern Library, 1999. [First published as Scott and Amundsen in 1979.].
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This tendentious work has split the community of Antarcticans woefully, with attacks on all sides: against Amundsen, particularly against Scott by the Huntford adherents, and fighting malice with malice, against Huntford himself. Few are wholly objective in this war, but it can be said that Huntford does present useful information when he stays away from anti-Scott speculation. Here are excerpts about reading on the various expeditions he covers.

Polar Colonization: The Preliminary Arctic Expedition of 1877.

Howgate, H. W. Washington: Beresford Printer, 1877?.
  • 1877-78 US Preliminary Arctic Expedition for IPY 1881-84 (led by Howard Howgate).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Describes a preliminary plan of exploration, useful for another main expedition of 1878, but involving both meteorological and naturalist research. The expedition had George Tyson as choosing a suitable ship, the Florence, and captain of the expedition which sailed on August 3 from New London for a year-long venture. Howgate was a flawed character who nonetheless was a consummate bookman, none better to prepare for the book needs of the IPY expedition in 1881.

Antarctic Scout

Chappell, Richard Lee. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Chappell was part of a program to send Boy Scouts on Antarctic expeditions, in his case to Operation Deep Freeze II when he was a winterover at Little America. Paul Siple was an earlier participant who became an important American explorer and encouraged this young man who later went to Princeton. The writing is wooden and generally sanctimonious, betraying the author’s youth. Reading is minimal, mostly confined to the Bible (p. 81), though he does find a copy of Murphy’s Oceanic Birds of South America to help his pursuit of ornithology, and he did participate in Little America’s “University of the Antarctic.” At those sessions he studied Morse code and did manage to send off a sample message. He ends with a rather fundamentalist homily based on Matt 28:20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Chappell does not appear to have published anything else.

The Strange and Dangerovs Voyage of Captaine Thomas Iames, in His Intended Discovery of the Northwest Passage into the South Sea….

James, Thomas. London, Legatt, 1633. [Reprint in Hakluyt Society edition of the Voyages of Luke Foxe and Thomas James. Two volumes. (London: Hakluyt Society, 1894). The James account is in Vol. II, p. 451-611.].
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

p. 606, in a list of instruments provided for his voyage are a number of books: A Chest full of the best and choicest Mathematicall bookes that could be got for money in England; as likewise Master Hackluite and Master Purchase, and other books of Journals and Histories.

From the Deep of the Sea, Being the Diary of the Late Charles Edward Smith M.R.C.S., Surgeon of the Whale-ship

Smith, Charles Edward. Diana of Hull. Edited by his Son. (ondon: A. & C, Black, 1922.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

The whaling voyage of the Diana occurred in 1866-67, during which the ship was trapped in the ice during the winter. Smith was surgeon aboard the whaler, and something of a puritan. In the words of the editor: Here we have an account straight from the pen, while the heart was still palpitating from some narrow escape or from what seemed at the time certain destruction.

Ninety Degrees North: The Quest for the North Pole.

Fleming, Fergus. London: Granta Books, 2001.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

This is a fairly standard account of high Arctic exploration, well-written and readable but offering little by way of new insights into the phenomenon. Chiefly deals with British and American explorers, but includes Nansen, Andree and others.

To the Ends of the Earth.

Pease, Francis K. London: Hurst & Blackett, 1935.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Begins with 1925 cruise to Antarctica aboard Discovery, Scott’s old ship, commanded by Stenhouse. First brought gifts to Tristan da Cunha, including many writing implements, essentially useless to that population, and “a large quantity of Bibles, in which, however, the Tristans displayed very little interest, for the reason…that during the course of the years so many Bibles had been sent to the island that there was now an average of seven copies per inhabitant” (p. 20).

The Pacific Journal of Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, 1767-1768.

Bougainville, Louis-Antoine de. Translated and edited by John Dunmore. (London: Hakluyt Society, 2002).
  • 1766-69 French Expedition (Louis-Antoine de Bougainville aboard Boudeuse).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 7, footnote 1: “Bougainville is fond of sprinkling Latin tags in his text, but he does so from memory and at times misquotes or changes the original. He draws his inspiration here and on a number of other occasions from Virgil’s Aeneid and in particular the first book in which a wild storm drives Aeneas and his men off course.” [Editor’s note]

The Autobiography of a Seaman.

Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald. (London: Richard Bentley, 1872).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This author is one very aristocratic sailor who had his troubles with the Royal Navy and the British government in the early nineteenth century. Suffice it to say that this is not a voice from the forecastle, but of petulant complaints concerning the “injustice and folly” of the government court (p. 493). There is nothing I could find in this book about polar reading, or any reading at all.

Life Aboard: The Journals of William N. and George F. Smith.

Smith, William N. and George F. Edited by Alan D. McNairn. (Saint John, CAN: NBM Publications, 1988.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Diaries of typical 19th-century voyages by New Brunswick ships to all over the world, usually carrying timber. Nothing polar about it (mostly St John to Liverpool), but an interesting example of a seaman’s journals.

Ten Months Among the Tents of the Tuski, with Incidents of an Arctic Boat Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, as far as the Mackenzie River, and Cape Bathurst.

Hooper, William H. (London: John Murray, 1853).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

William Hulme Hooper (1827-1854) was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and part of the 1848 expedition aboard the Plover, under the command of Capt. T. E. L. Moore, to search for the ill-fated Franklin expedition. Moore's expedition spent three years in the high Arctic, wintering the first year (1848-1849) on the Chukotsk Peninsula, later sailing to the Beaufort Sea. From there, Hooper made two overland trips up the Mackenzie River to Fort Simpson, on the second of which he travelled overland to Norway House, The Pas, and south through what is now Manitoba to reach the voyageur route back to Montreal, and thence to England (see Arctic Bibliography 7395). This is a very scarce account, seldom mentioned in most histories of Arctic exploration, and often overlooked in the lore of the search for Sir John Franklin and his party. Notwithstanding, Hooper's account is full of interesting information and observations, including detailed descriptions of the life, customs, dwellings, clothing and beliefs of the Chukchis (Tuski), and of the North Alaska Eskimo generally; as well as notes on the Mackenzie Eskimo and Indians, sea and river ice, hunting and trapping, and the character of the territory covered in his journeys.

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
 Preview 

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.