p. 281, in “The Rotation Method” section (p. 279-96): Starting from a principle is affirmed by people of experience to be a very reasonable procedure; I am willing to humor them, and so begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. The principle possesses the quality of being in the highest degree repellent, an essential requirement in the case of negative principles, which are in the last analysis the principles of all motion. It is not merely repellent, but infinitely forbidding; and whoever has this principle back of him cannot but receive an infinite impetus forward, to help him make new discoveries. For; if my principle is true, one need only consider how ruinous boredom is for humanity, and by properly adjusting the intensity of one’s concentration upon this fundamental truth, attain any desired degree of momentum. Should one wish to attain the maximum momentum, even to the point of almost endangering the driving power, one need only say to oneself: Boredom is the root of all evil. Strange that boredom, in itself so staid and stolid, should have such power to set in motion. The influence it exerts is altogether magical, except it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion.
Either/Or
- Arctic Reading: General
The Life of Sir John Richardson.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
A typical Victorian biography of an exemplary life, with a good deal of material from his journals, and considerable emphasis on Richardson’s religious convictions.
Life of Admiral Leopold McClintock… by an Old Messmate Sir Clements Markham, with an Introductory Note by the Most Rev. William Alexander, Archbishop of Armagh.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
The Preface by William Armagh describes McClintock’s as “a life more noble and inspiring, more humble to God and more tender to man: Humble without affectation, and tender without weakness.”
The Last Voyage of Capt. Sir John Ross, R. N. Knt. To the Arctic Regions; For the Discovery of a North West Passage; Performed in the Years 1829-30-31-32 and 33.
- 1829-33 British Private Second Voyage to the Northwest Passage (John Ross aboard Victory).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Includes accounts of earlier British voyages to the high Arctic. Huish is wonderfully sardonic in viewing the whole operation from Captain Ross on down.
In Search of a Penguin’s Egg.
- 1958-59 British FIDS (BAS) Expedition at Halley Bay.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Norman Nelson was in the British National Service when he was transferred to a FIDS expedition to the Falklands and the Antarctic Peninsula in 1958. Raymond Priestley introduced him to the prospect of following up on Edward Wilson’s penguin studies of 1911. His experience was similar.
Tom Crean: Unsung Hero of the Scott and Shackleton Antarctic Expeditions.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
There is not much about Crean’s reading or even his education (minimal). There is this passage from a time ashore at Cape Evans in 1911:
Greenland, the Adjacent Seas, and the North-West Passage to the Pacific Ocean.
- Arctic Reading: United States
O'Reilly served as surgeon aboard a whale-ship, in order to gather scientific information on the northern regions. He gives much information concerning Arctic zoology, whale fishery, natural atmospheric phenomena, observations of magnetic variation, the history and habitation of Greenland, and observations concerning the possibility of a Northwest Passage." Field - "The observations of the author on the natives of Greenland, are recorded on pp. 52 and 85, of which the last two are occupied with a vocabulary of their language. Five of the plates are illustrative of the features, or habits of life of the Exquimaux." According to Abbey an article in the 'Quarterly Review' called the book 'a bare faced imposition.' Stanton & Tremaine mentions the book is said to have been plagiarized from material prepared by Sir Charles L. M. von Giescke. Hill: Pacific Voyages, p. 219. Field: Indian Bibliography, p. 297
Seamen’s Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth.
- Arctic Reading: General
p. 106-7, on the influence of Lieutenant Richard Marks as an evangelical in the Napoleonic Wars who as minister expanded seaboard services on Nelson’s Conquerer including reading of Sunday prayers, a ship’s choir, and on arrival at home ports: Marks obtained Bibles for every mess, and several hundred tracks for distribution. (Henceforth, he seldom went between decks ‘without seeing some of the crew reading them.) He also organized a ship’s library of evangelical books, with over 150 subscribing members.
Nantucket Whalemen in the Deep-sea Fishery: the Changing Anatomy of an Early American Labor Force,
- Maritime Reading
On the whaling journey of the brig Polley to West Africa in 1774, and in particular one of its crew, Samuel Atkins, who wrote some poetry about the journey: Steadily the nerves of unlucky whalemen were worn down by loneliness, boredom, and the knowledge that the vessel would have to remain at sea until a reasonable haul of oil had been taken in (p. 278).
New Light on Herman Melville’s Cruise in the Charles and Henry,
- Whalemen's Reading
Second section is on books aboard the ship Charles and Henry on which Melville shipped in 1840 for five years.
Aurora Australis: The Book of the 1907/09 British Antarctic Expedition.
- 1907-09 British Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Nimrod).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
See print of a pressroom following title of “Struggle? for the Broom”
Thin Edge of the World.
- 1952-54 Double voyage of Frenchman André Migot to Kerguélen Islands and to the Mawson Base in Antarctica as doctor and naturalist.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
A double expedition for something of a French loner with an Antarctic obsession. After a varied exploratory career, primarily in Tibet, Migot began this journey with a French expedition spending one year on the Kerguélen Islands as doctor to a 50-man contingent, as well as a biological researcher. As he was preparing to return he learned of a subsequent Australian expedition to Antarctica itself, intended to set up the Mawson base in the Australian sector of Antarctica. He applied, was accepted, and a month after the French left the Australians picked him up to go directly to the Australian bases on the continent where he again served as doctor and naturalist, although the trip only lasted three months.
The Gifts of Reading.
- Arctic Reading: General
p. 31-32: As I work on this essay, over the Christmas of 2015, I know that a copy of my book The Wild Places is being sledge-hauled to the South Pole by a young Scottish adventurer called Luke Robertson, who is aiming to become the youngest Briton to ski there unassisted, unsupported and solo. Robertson’s sledge weighs seventeen stone, and he is dragging it for thirty-five days over 730 miles of snow and ice, in temperatures as low as -50˚C, and winds as high as 100mph. Under such circumstances I felt impossibly proud that The Wild Places (paperback weight: 8.9oz) had earned its place on his sledge, and impossibly excited at the thought of my sentences being read out there on the crystal continent, under the endless daylight of the austral summer.
Alone.
- 1933-35 Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
After several expeditions Byrd, trying to justify his solo wintering at Advance Base, felt restless:
A Voyage to Terra Australis, Undertaken for the Purpose of Completing the Discovery of that Vast Country….
- Antarctic Reading: General
Vol. I, p. 6: Among the books on this voyage were the “books of voyages to the South Seas, which, with our own individual collections, and the Encyclopedia Britannica, presented by the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Banks, formed a library in my cabin for the use of all the officers.” Every Admiralty chart for Australia was copied for them.