p. 117, an attempt to recreate a reading experience of a letter with liberating news: My feelings, during the reading of this letter, may perhaps be conceived, but I cannot attempt to describe them; to form an idea of my emotions at that time, it is necessary for the reader to transport himself in imagination to the country where I then was, a wretched slave, and to fancy himself as having passed through all the dangers and distresses that I had experienced: reduced to the lowest pitch of human wretchedness, degradation, and despair, a skinless skeleton, expecting death at every instant: then let him fancy himself receiving such a letter from a perfect stranger, whose name he had never before heard, and from a place where there was not an individual creature that had ever before heard of his existence, and in one of the most barbarous regions of the habitable globe : let him receive at the same time clothes to cover and defend his naked, emaciated, and trembling frame, shoes for his mangled feet, and such provisions as he had been accustomed to in his happier days — let him find a soothing and sympathising friend in a barbarian, and one who spoke perfectly well the language of a Christian nation ; and with all this, let him behold a prospect of a speedy liberation and restoration to his beloved family:
An Authentic Narrative of the Loss of the American Brig Commerce, Wrecked on the Western Coast of Africa, in the Month of August, 1815, with an Account of the Sufferings of the Surviving Officers and Crew, Who were Enslaved by the Wandering Arabs, on the African Desart, or Zahahrah….
- 1815 US Naval Expedition to African West Coast (aboard Commerce commanded by James Riley).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Dr Kane’s Arctic Voyage: Explanatory of a Pictorial Illustration of the Second Grinnell Expedition.
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
This is a printed version of Morton’s oral narrative of a panorama of Grinnell’s second expedition, devised shortly after Kane’s death. The introduction is a glowing panegyric to Kane.
Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean… in the United States Frigate Essex, in the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814.
- 1812-1814 American Naval Cruise to the Pacific commanded by David Porter (aboard frigate Essex).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
The second edition is the only complete edition and generally regarded as the best one. The 1986 introduction added much information of importance and interest. – Hill. Samuel Eliot Morison called it the best bit of sea literature of the period. (See also Smith II, 1632. Howes P-484 (aa). Hill 1373.)
The Whale and his Captors; Or, The Whaleman’s Adventures, and the Whale’s Biography, as Gathered on the Homeward Cruise of the "Commodore Preble."
- Whalemen's Reading
The author is a pious, anti-papist clergyman travelling in a whaler from the South Seas to Boston, observing whaling practices and especially critical of the Sabbath-breaking customs of whalers.
Typed transcript of Endurance journal, 1914-15 and 1915-16.
- 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
p. 7, Nov 3, 1915 Wedn, after smashup: At the ship I entered Clark’s cabin which is just above water and got some books for him.
The American Traveller: Or, Observations on the Present State, Culture and Commerce of the British Colonies in America.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Cluny wrote this after a year at HBC’s York Factory, attacking the Company for its monopoly and the suspicion they were hiding knowledge of the Northwest Passage.
General Greely: The Story of a Great American
- Maritime Reading
p. 76: Greely had brought along a very good library, which proved to a great source of interest and comfort during the dark months. Besides the scientific works, encyclopedias and books related to the Arctic, there were over one thousand novels and magazines. Private Schneider, a young German, played the violin, his favorite selection being “Over the Garden Wall.
Life at the Bottom: the People of Antarctica.
- 1975-76 NSF Sponsored Trip to McMurdo Sound.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Journalist’s account of an Antarctic visit in 1975-76, courtesy NSF.
Antarctica, 1958,
- 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
In 1958, I was a duty helmsman on the bridge of the U.S.S. Arneb, an ungainly naval transport ship with the lines of a tramp steamer…. When I went below to crash, taking to my rack, which was at the top of a four-high tier. I lay down to read with my pocket flashlight. I had “Ulysses” checked out from the Norfolk, Virginia, public library, and plenty of time to be patient with it. When we started sliding to port, I’d stay with Leopold Bloom for as long as I could tough it out, waiting for the big lumbering ship to arrest its roll and come back to starboard…. Then I’d set my book aside and ponder my fortune….
Longitude and Empire: How Captain Cook’s Voyages Changed the World.
- 1768–79 British Naval Expeditions of Captain James Cook.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
In a daring, almost reckless shift, Richardson moves the discussion of what Cook may have read to who may have read Cook’s voyages and how the reading of Cook’s voyages changed the Western view of the world. Cites library statistics from late 18th-century Bristol to show Hawkesworth the most circulated book, with its description of Cook’s first voyage, as the most circulated book in the decade of 1773-1784. By its very organization, he sees the library as a statement about the world and the places in it. As Captain Cook had authority over his ships just as his printed voyages took on the authority of the printed word. He thus sees Cook as an important point of origin for empire as a collection of places as well as a sovereign authority over them (p. 200).
Kah´Da: Life of a North Greenland Eskimo Boy.
- Arctic Reading: United States
A juvenile about the Smith Sound Eskimos, with whom MacMillan had lived for a total of six years.
Hudson’s Bay; Or Every-day Life in the Wilds of North America, during Six Years’ Residence in the Territories of the Honourable Hudson’s Bay Company.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
A good description of life and travel in mid-century HBC territory, by an amiable parson.
Reminiscences of service aboard USS Flasher (SSN 613) as yeoman submariner in 1966-69.
- 1966-68 US Deployment of USS Flasher to Kamchatka and Beyond.
- Arctic Reading: United States
The sub adopted as its honorary submariner the novelist Louis L'Amour, author of Western thrillers. Dale was the yeoman who corresponded with him, sent him a letter when they crossed the equator, and L'Amour in turn sent signed copies of all his work to the ship.
Herman Melville’s Charles and Henry Book List, 1849
- Maritime Reading
“Hardly the carefully ordered reading program of a university, but since Melville declared in Moby-Dick (Chapter 24) that ‘a whale-ship was my Yale College and my Harvard,’ this little library should be taken into account among his early formative influences.”
Voyage autour du Monde exécuté sur les corvettes de S. M. l’Uranie et la Physicienne 1870-20.
- 1817-20 French Exploring Expedition (aboard Urania commanded by Louis de Freycinet).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading