Wooden Ships and Iron Men: The Story of the Square-Rigged Merchant Marine of British North America, the Ships, Their Builders and Owners, and the Men Who Sailed Them.

Wallace, Frederick William. New York: George Sully & Company, 1924.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Largely an encomium to the British men and ships operating in what is now known as Canada, with emphasis on the maritime provinces. There is a great deal of information about the building and history of Canadian, particularly those of Nova Scotia, but nothing I could find on the provision of reading matter. Probably the officers and men were too busy setting speed records.

Scout to Explorer: Back with Byrd in the Antarctic.

Siple, Paul. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1936.
  • 1933-35 Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Here is Siple’s account of his return to Antarctica on the Second Byrd Expedition. He’s lost a little of his Boy Scott adolescence but is still a young man filled with wonderment at his good fortune of being asked to return, and at the lack of wonder among some of his new colleagues.

The Man on the Ice Cap. The Life of August Courtauld.

Woolaston, Nicholas. (London: Constable, 1980).
  • 1930-31 British Greenland Air Route Expedition.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Courtauld was a British yachtsman who notably spent a winter alone as meteorologist on the Greenland icecap in 1930-31, where he had considerable reading matter.

Antarctica: An Encyclopedia

Stewart, John. Second revised edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1990.
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 108, entry for “Books”: The first book published in Antarctica was Aurora Australis, a 120-page book written in 1908 by Shackleton and his 14-man crew of winterers to ward off boredom. They wrote it, printed, and bound it. Joyce and Wild typeset it, Marston illustrated, and Day created the covers. Shackleton’s printing press had been presented to him by Messrs. Joseph Causton and Sons, and they had trained Joyce and Wild in printing and typesetting. During Charcot’s Pourquoi Pas? expedition of 1908-10, Jules Rouch wrote a novel for a bet. It was called L’Amant de la dactylographe (The Typist’s Lover). Charcot brought 1,500 books with him on that trip. The Ross Sea party of 1914-17, under Mackintosh, had an Encyclopaedia Britannica available. On the other side of Antarctica Hurley salvaged some volumes of Britannica when the Endurance went down in 1915.

The Big Sea: An Autobiography….

Hughes, Langston. (New York: Hill & Wang, 1963). [First published in 1940.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. 3: Melodramatic maybe, it seems to me now. But then it was like throwing a million bricks out of my heart when I threw the book into the water. I leaned over the rail of the S.S. Malone and threw the books as far as I could out into the sea—all the books I had had at Columbia, and all the books I had lately bought to read.

Two Men in the Antarctic: An Expedition to Graham Land 1920-1922.

Bagshawe, Thomas Wyatt. With a Foreword by Frank Debenham. Cambridge: University Press, 1939.
  • 1920-22 British Graham Land Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Elaborate plans made by John Cope, including a flight to the South Pole with George Hubert Wilkins, diminished for lack of funds to a winter spent by Bagshawe and Lt. Maxime Lester in an abandoned whaleboat, turned over to provide some shelter. Remarkably, the two men did perform some scientific work and observations. William Mills called it “the smallest party ever to winter on the Antarctic continent.”

No Man’s Land: A History of Spitsbergen from its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country.

Conway, Sir William Martin. Cambridge: University Press, 1906.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

A general history of the archipelago, based on Conway’s studies and his earlier visits. Although he reviews a number of books in preparation for his manuscript, he does not here reveal the thoughtful reader who appears in his earlier narratves

Address, on the Subject of a Surveying and Exploring Expedition to the Pacific Ocean and South Seas…April 3, 1836.

Reynolds, Jeremiah N. New York: Harper, 1836.
  • 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Recounts importance of maritime power to U.S. for commerce, yielding the North and Arctic to Britain which he says will find the Northwest Passage, and arguing for scientific exploration (p. 22-3) without immediate dividends though the practical benefits will soon follow. His proposal is for a voyage of discovery to the Pacific and Southern Oceans.

Bound for Australia: Shipboard Reading in the Nineteenth Century.

Bell, Bill. In Journeys through the Market: Travel, Travellers and the Book Trade. Edited by Robin Myers and Michael Harris. Folkstone, Kent, UK; New Castle, DE: Oak Knoll Press, 1999, p. 119-40. [St Paul’s Bibliographies].
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

A fascinating study of books and reading aboard emigrant ship travelling from Britain to Australia when all sorts of passengers, from gentlemen to convicts, experienced “the longest period of enforced leisure that they would ever again enjoy.

Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait….

Lauridsen, Peter. Revised by the Author, and Translated from the Danish by Julius E. Olson… with an Introduction to the American Edition by Frederick Schwatka.Chicago: S. C. Griggs. 1889.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

A defense of Baring and his achievements verging on hagiography, taking on his early critics quite convincingly.

Climbing the Pole: Edmund Hillary & the Trans-Antarctic Expedition 1955-1958.

Thomson, John. Norwich, UK: Erskine Press, 2010.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An excellent book which skewers Hillary for his disingenuous claim that his trip to the South Pole, upstaging Vivian Fuchs, was a spur of the moment decision, while convincingly documenting that it was Hillary’s intent from the outset of his involvement with TAE.

H.M.S. Resolute: A Study in International Relations,

Dunbar, Moira. Beaver Outfit 292 (Winter 1961) 11-17.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A crisp account of the abandonment, drift, recovery, refurbishment, and return of HMS Resolute to the Royal Navy, and its subsequent breakup, with its oak timbers used for a desk given to the United States. Of the refurbishment it states (p. 16) that “She was refitted with the greatest care and in the minutest detail (even the officers’ libraries, musical boxes, and pictures were preserved and restored to their original position).”