Journal of a Cruise Made to the Pacific Ocean… in the United States Frigate Essex, in the Years 1812, 1813, and 1814.

Porter, David. Two volumes. Second edition. New York: Wiley & Halsted, 1822. [A modern edition was published in Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1986, with an Introduction by R. D. Madison, Edited and with Notes by R. D. Madison and Karen Hamon.].
  • 1812-1814 American Naval Cruise to the Pacific commanded by David Porter (aboard frigate Essex).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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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.)

Miscellaneous notes, etc. from diaries.

Orde Lees, Thomas. SPRI MS 967/3/2.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Includes a list of books that seems to serve as something of a circulation record as well, indicating the person who had the book and in some cases gives a date of Jan 31which may have indicated a loan period. It does not include everything known to have made it to Elephant Island, such as 5 vols. of the Britannica. In fact few of the items on this list did make it beyond Dump Camp.

Daily Journal. Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (primarily temperature, animal, auroral, and magnetic observations). Explorer’s Club Inventory 2003-007. Each page bears stamp reading: “Recovered by Robert E. Peary, C. E., U.S.N., from Fort Conger, May, 1899, under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club, and by it restored to the United States, December, 1899.

Greely, Adolphus W. These volumes are in good condition and show none of the wear seen in other Fort Conger books.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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The official records of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition (1881-84) at the Explorers Club include the Daily Journal, copies of Letters sent, and the Sledge Journal.

The Two Voyages of the ‘Pandora’ in 1875 and 1876.

Young, Allan. (London: Edward Stanford, 1879).
  • 1875-76 Private Expedition to Magnetic North Pole and North West Passage (Captain Allen Young aboard Pandora).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Mr De Wilde was the artist (hydrographic sketches) and J. A Macgahan the correspondent. Young was commander who earlier was the sailing master on McClintock’s Fox in 1857-59, and wrote the article in Cornhill #1 on the Fox, republished in 1875. By this time, Young was in the Naval Reserve, though this was not a Royal Navy mission. He himself paid for it with the help of Lady Franklin and James Gordon Bennett. Left on June 25 with two bags of letters for Alert and Discovery.

Before the Heroes Came: Antarctica in the 1890s.

Baughman, T. H. Lincoln, NE: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1994.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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A solid but rather dry account of exploration in Antarctica during the decade before Robert Falcon Scott’s first expedition aboard the Discovery, and centered on Carsten Borchgrevink, his first landing on the Antarctic Continent, and his 1898-1900 Southern Cross expedition. In his concluding chapter, “Lessons not Learned,” Baughman explicitly accuses Clements Markham and Scott of failing to learn the lessons from the previous decade, thus leading to their “heroic” failure. In particular Markham insisted on naval leadership by the wrong people, avoiding scientific expertise, bypassing William Speirs Bruce for Scott, etc.

Incidents of a Whaling Voyage….

Olmsted, Francis Allyn. New York: Appleton, 1841). (New edition. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, 1969).
  • Maritime Reading
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Olmsted was a passenger aboard the whaler North American [a temperance ship] in 1839, a trip taken as a kind of rest cure for his chronic nervous debility. He returned to Yale for medical school and in fact graduated but died in 1844 after a second voyage.

The U.S. Grinnell Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin: A Personal Memoir

Kane, Elisha Kent. New York: Harper, 1854.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Kane was surgeon aboard the Advance, under the command of Edwin De Haven. The search did find the three graves at Beechey Island, but DeHaven felt the voyage to be ineffectual. Kane went on to command the second Grinnell expedition in 1853.

Narrative of a Voyage to the South Seas, and the Shipwreck of the Princess of Wales Cutter, with an Account of Two Years Residence on an Uninhabited Island.

Goodridge, Charles Medyette. 6th ed. Exeter: W. C. Featherstone and Sold by the Author, 1852.
  • 1820-22 British Sealing Voyage (aboard Princess of Wales).
  • Maritime Reading
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Account of a sealing voyage (starting May 1820) off the Cape of Good Hope which led to shipwreck and abandonment (in Crozet Islands). Curious blend of adventure, piety, and natural history (esp. birds). The unpaginated preliminaries include a preface, index (contents), opinions of the press, and lengthy subscriber lists organized by place and edition.

Last Places: A Journey in the North

Millman, Lawrence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
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p. 132-4, on Johann Petursson, keeper of the lighthouse at Hornbjarg: Johann took the Hornbjarg job in 1961 because he figured it would buy time for, and even fuel, the novel he was writing. It was unheard of, he said, for an Icelandic writer to combine teaching with the labor of his pen…. His literary colleagues tended lighthouses, from which they still managed to carry on a lively dialogue with their public, like the Skálavik keeper Oscar Adalstein Gudjónsson, who read sections of his works in progress over shortwave to the fishing fleet. Yet between navigating boats around icebergs, gathering errant fishing floats, and enduring assistants who couldn’t read the cloud charts…, he, Jóhann, had scarcely written a single word in twenty-six years.

Icebound in Antarctica

Lewis, David and Mimi George. London: Secker & Warburg, 1987.
  • 1982-84 Australian Yacht Cruises (aboard Dick Smith Explorer).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 81, on meeting the Russian icebreaker Kapitan Markov: There were sixteen women on their ship, most in their thirties and forties. Some were very good-looking. I noticed. Some were sailors; some laundry workers. We tied to a rope a copy of Voyage to the Ice, the story of my 1977-8 expedition. It was hauled up and we received in return a guide to Leningrad’s Hermitage Museum.