p. 6-7, Chapter I: The weather now was intensely hot and fine, and that feeling of drowsiness and languor came over me, which I have always experienced on first reaching the tropics. Reading becomes a delusion and a snare, and to take up a book means to be asleep in a few minutes. On Sunday, May 11th, we sighted Rotumah. This was the first island I intended visiting, my object here being to ship some of the natives, to strengthen my present crew. No one ought to attempt a voyage through the South Sea Islands without carrying an extra crew of this kind. For in the first place there are so many islands where there is no anchorage or perhaps a very precarious one, that it is better to keep the vessel standing off and on, worked by the white crew, while those who wish to visit the island go away in the boat manned by the South Sea Islanders. A coloured crew, too, are better able to row about all day in the hot sun; they are cheery, light-hearted companions, and are always ready, and enjoy the fun of diving into the water after any shell or piece of coral that one may fancy whilst rowing over the reefs.
A Yachting Cruise in the South Seas.
- 1872- Private British Voyage to Sandwich Islands (Cunard Line).
- Maritime Reading
The Ice and the Inland: Mawson, Flynn, and the Myth of the Frontier.
- 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
A comparative study of two frontiersmen, Douglas Mawson’s work in Antarctica (mostly 1911-14) and John Flynn, a Presbyterian minister of the Australian Inland Mission. Concentrating on the AAE (1911-14) Hains has gone through many if not all of the diaries of participants, taking special note of their books and reading, more so than any expedition I know of.
Second in Command: A Biography of Captain Francis Crozier.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
A short biography, probably the first, of Crozier, with some useful information but hardly profound treatment.
Reminiscences of a Voyage Around the World.
- 1849-51 American Circumnavigation (aboard Hampton).
- Maritime Reading
Written by an Assistant Librarian of the University of Michigan and son of the captain, who says he wrote it to increase an “insufficient salary.” First published in a weekly newspaper, readers he claims called for book publication. The author was early on a cabin boy, a job from which he was “ignominiously dismissed” for his greater interest in the world, than the world around him.
She Went a-whaling: the Journal of Martha Smith Brewer Brown.
- 1847-48 Whaling Voyage to South Pacific (aboard Lucy Ann).
- Maritime Reading
An example of a whaling captain’s wife going to sea with him. Whaling wives were usually known for their New England piety amidst the rough-hewn crews of 19th-century whaling ships. This is the diary of one of them, Martha Brown, who sailed from Orient NY aboard the Lucy Ann on August 31, 1847, on an eastward voyage round the world that eventually passed Cape Horn:
Polar Pioneers. John Ross and James Clark Ross.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
A joint biography of uncle and nephew with much on other explorers of the time, e.g., Parry. There is an impressive body of contemporary literature surrounding the Rosses and Parry which is well-described here, including the acrimony between uncle and nephew, John and James.
How the “Mastiffs” Went to Iceland.
- 1878 British Voyage to Iceland (aboard Mastiff).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
The Mastiff was a yacht owned by John Burns (Lord Inverclyde) who took a group of men aboard his yacht on a trip to the Faroes and Iceland in 1878. Trollope wrote this story of the voyage and published it privately in the same year. Although hardly Polar, Iceland is certainly an interesting exemplar of the print culture of the North. Rather sardonic account of summer trip to Iceland in 1878 aboard the Mastiff, Trollope calling the passengers the Mastiffs.
Hudson’s Bay Copy Booke of Letters Commissions Instructions Outward 1688-1696.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
This is a miscellaneous collection of letters of the HBC on the early history of the Company and its early tribulations.
Elisha Kent Kane and the Seafaring Frontier
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
p. 55-56, on setting off on the first Grinnell expedition: I collected as I could some simple instruments for thermal and magnetic registration, which would have been of use if they had found their way on board. A very few books for the dark hours of winter, and a stock of coarse woolen clothing…constituted my entire outfit; and with these I made my report to Commodore Salter at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.
A Briefe Historie of Muscovia.
- Arctic Reading: General
p. 524: The discovery of Russia by the northern Ocean, made first, of any Nation that we know, by English men, might have seem’d an enterprise almost heroick; if any higher end than the excessive love of Gain and Traffick, had animated the design. Nevertheless that in regard that may things not unprofitable to the knowledge of nature, and other Observations are hereby come to light, as good events ofttimes arise from evil occasions, it will not be the worst labour to relate briefly the beginning, and prosecution of this adventurous Voiage; until it became at last a familiar Passage.
The Quiet Land: The Diaries of Frank Debenham, Member of the British Antarctic Expedition 1910-1913.
- 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
On Debenham’s experience of the Scott expedition and its tragic end. It was he who suggested that excess funds in the memorial Appeal be used for an institute of Polar research and he became SPRI’s first Director, an unpaid position which he held from 1920 to 1946.
Journal of a Voyage in Baffin’s Bay and Barrow Straits, in the Years 1850-1851, Performed in H.M. Ships “Lady Franklin” and “Sophia,” under the Command of Mr. William Penny….
- 1848-51 British Expedition in Franklin Search (commanded by Capt. T.E.L. Moore aboard H.M.S. Plover).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
These volumes recount one of the early Franklin search expeditions, originally organized by Lady Franklin but adopted and furnished by the Admiralty, and which wintered near the Resolute and Assistance, and were also close to John Ross’s Felix and Mary expedition (HBC). Sutherland was surgeon on the Sophia, and appears from these volumes to have been a most panglossian optimist, as can be seen from some of the quotations below.
Voyages from Asia to America, for Completing the Discoveries of the North West Coast of America. To which is Prefixed, A Summary of the Voyages Made by the Russians on the Frozen Sea, in Search of a North East Passage.
- Arctic Reading: Russia
Incidents of a Whaling Voyage. To which are Added Observations on the…Sandwich and Society Islands.
- Whalemen's Reading
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.
Shackleton.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
This is a strong, balanced, and helpful biography of Shackleton, marred by Huntford’s invidious detestation of Scott for whom he loses no opportunity, real or speculative, to denigrate, carrying on much as he did in The Last Place on Earth.