The Last of the Arctic Voyages, Being a Narrative of the Expedition in H.M.S. Assistance …, in Search of Sir John Franklin, during the Years 1852-53-54.

Belcher, Sir Edward. Two volumes. London: Lovell Reeve, 1855.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Belcher’s account is clearly one which he wrote during his voyage, and is interesting in noting his use of books aboard the ship, books we know to be present since they are in the catalogue of the Assistance.

Two Voyages to the South Seas. Volume II: Astrolabe and Zélée 1837-1840.

D’Urville, Jules S-C. Translated from the French and edited by Helen Rosenman. Melbourne, Australia: Melbourne University Press, 1987.
  • 1837-40 French South Seas Voyage of Astrolabe (Jules d’Urville).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

D’Urville proposed this second voyage to the South Seas but it was the French King who suggested that its first goal should be toward the South Pole as ice permitted. Through the Admiral Minister the King “approved everything I asked for.” This volume is taken from D’Urville’s journals of the second voyage with a great deal of connective commentary and paraphrases by the editor. It is her writing that appears in quotes below and his journals without quotes.

Around the World: A Narrative of a Voyage in the East India Squadron, under Commodore George C. Read, by an Officer of the Navy.

Read, George Campbell, USN. In Two Volumes. New-York: Charles S. Francis, 1840.
  • 1838-39 American Circumnavigation (aboard Columbia commanded by George Campbell Read).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

Rear Admiral George Campbell Read had a distinguished naval career including service on the USS Constitution (“Old Ironsides”) in the War of 1812, in the Barbary Wars, and in this Sumatra expedition as Commodore of the Columbia. I assume this is his book (OCLC catalogues it as his), but it is hard to tell since the author refers to Read in the third person, and to himself as one of the Professors. Whoever the author, he is a thoughtful, even elegant writer with a self-deprecating impulse not common among admirals or explorers.

Ned Myers; or, A Life before the Mast.

Cooper, James Fenimore. In Two Volumes. London: Richard Bentley, 1843.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

An 1840 Cooper work in which he served as amanuensis in telling the narrative of Ned Evans attempting to “lay before the world the experience of a common seaman,” such as Cooper himself knew, and which follows that pattern of degradation and conversion. I confess to an early impression that the work was more novel than narrative, and it certainly is an hybrid genre of edited narrative, or a semi-imaginary reconstruction, in which the narrator [Cooper?] is telling the story of Ned Myers. The repeated cycle of debauchment does become tiresome.

Two Years in the Antarctic, Being a Narrative of the British National Antarctic Expedition.

Armitage, Albert B. London: Edward Arnold, 1905.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Unlike many on the first Scott expedition, Armitage had previous polar experience as second in command of the Jackson-Harmsworth Expedition (Franz Josef Land) and in the rescue of Nansen in 1895. He was also second in command for Scott and served as the. Discovery navigator. His diaries show some ambiguities in his relationships with Scott, but this is a very respectful account, devoid of many of the pieties which blemish so many expedition narratives.

Assault on Eternity: Richard Byrd and the Exploration of Antarctica, 1946-47.

Rose, Lisle Abbott. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1980.
  • 1946-48 US Operation Highjump, Byrd’s Fourth Expedition to Little America (aboard USS Mount Olympus).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

This is a true tale of daring and romance, of tedium and tragedy, of folly and heroism, of adventure enjoyed and adventure endured one-third of a century ago by some forty-seven hundred men in thirteen ships at the bottom of the earth.

Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska.

Kent, Rockwell. …with an Introduction by Dorothy Canfield. New York: Halcyon House, c.1930.
  • 1919 Rockwell Kent Alaskan Trip at Fox Island.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

A journal of Kent’s seven-month winter sojourn on Fox Island, Resurrection Bay, Alaska, with his 9-year old son Rockwell, staying in the cabin of an old Alaskan hand named Olson. Illustrated with some of Kent’s early work.

The Great White South, or with Scott in the Antarctic. Being an Account of Experiences with Captain Scott’s South Pole Expedition and of the Nature Life of the Antarctic… and an Introduction by Lady Scott.

Ponting, Herbert G. London: Duckworth, 1921.
  • 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

p. 1: I might almost say that I first met Captain Scott in Siberia. I may at least state that it was there that I first got to know him, for I occupied myself during a journey over the Trans-Siberian railway in January, 1907, by reading his recently published work ‘The Voyage of the Discovery.’ I had bought the two volumes in Tokyo, thinking that they might furnish appropriate reading for a journey in the frigid conditions of climate which prevail in Siberia at that time of the year; and during my two weeks’ incarceration in the train, as it meandered over a third of the circumference of the globe, from Vladivostock to Moscow, I found that virile story of adventure of absorbing interest. Little then did I imagine that I should one day meet the great explorer in the flesh; much less that before four years had elapsed I should be accompanying him on his second voyage to the Antarctic regions. Wonderful, indeed, are the ways of Fate in the framing of our destinies!

Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620. In Two Books: Book I. The Danish Expeditions to Greenland…; Book II. The Expedition of Captain Jens Munk.

Gosch, C.C.A. Edited, with Notes and Annotations by C.A. Gosch. Two Volumes. London: Hakluyt Society, 1897.
  • 1605-1620 Danish Arctic Expeditions.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

Book I: The Danish Expeditions to Greenland in 1605, 1606, and 1607; to which is Added Captain James Hall’s Voyage to Greenland in 1612.

The Natural History of the Sperm Whale…, to which is Added, a Sketch of a South-Sea Whaling Voyage.

Beale, Thomas. London: John van Voorst, 1839.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Part I is a scientific and fairly analytic description of the sperm whale, from physiology to diet to reproductive systems. Part II on the voyage begins in October 1830, observing no land between England and Cape Horn, where the Fuegians despite the gloomy terrain and wretched conditions “seem to possess a considerable share of that inestimable blessing—happiness” (p. 200). It is both charming and frightening in its description of certain adventures, and very good at describing the extremes of ennui and excitement.

Whaling Wherein are Discussed the First Whalemen of Whom We Have Record

Hawes, Charles Boardman. … [to] the Present State of a Once Flourishing and Lucrative Industry. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1924.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

p. 320-21, on the decline of the industry, and the sources of its history: Thus dies old-fashioned whaling. There is only one way now to see it, and that is in its records and relics. Of records there are many, beginning away back with the days of Basque and Norseman and coming on down, through the Spitzbergen days—both English and Dutch accounts of them—the later Arctic whaling of the Hull and the Dundee fleet, and the "southern whale fishery" to our own American whaling. Of those earlier days some few first-hand accounts still survive, and of American whaling there are literally hundreds of log books and account books—the one showing life at sea; the other, the counting-house side of the game.

Seamen’s Missions: Their Origin and Early Growth.

Kverndal, Roald. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 1986.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

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.

Narrative of a Voyage of H.M.S. Herald during the Years 1845-51, under the Command of Captain Henry Kellett…being A Circumnavigation of the Globe.

Seemann, Berthold. Two volumes. London: Reeve and Co., 1853.
  • 1845-51 British Voyage of Exploration to the West Coast and the Pacific (Commanded by Henry Kellett aboard HMS Herald).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

This expedition was focused on the US West Coast and Pacific natural history rather than high latitudes though it did reach the Bering Strait. Its focus was chiefly botanical.

With Peary Near the Pole.

Astrup, Eivind. London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1898.
  • 1891-1920 Robert Peary and the Search for the North Pole; 1891-97 and 1898 US Northern Greenland and North Pole Expeditions (Commanded by Robert E. Peary).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Astrup participated in two of Peary’s early Greenland expeditions, in 1891-92 and 1893-94.