To coin a phrase, this could be called a French semi-circumnavigation, from France and back via the Cape of Good Hope. Originally commanded by Nicolas Baudin who died during the expedition, he was replaced by Louis de Freycinet. Curiously Baudin is never mentioned by name in the book (illustrating Péron’s contempt) and his role was widely regarded by the men as a negative one. These volumes are less an official record of the voyage than Péron’s personal account of his naturalist studies framed by the places which they visited.
Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands.
Péron, François, continued by Louis de Freycinet. Second Edition 1824. Translated from the French by Christine Cornell. Introduction by Anthony J. Brown. [Two volumes, plus Atlas]. (Adelaide, Australia: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 1824).
- 1801-03 French Exploring Expedition to South Seas and Terra Australis (Captain Nicolas Baudin aboard Géographe).
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
Preview
The Log of the Scotia Expedition, 1902-4.
Bruce, William Speirs. Edited by Peter Speak. With a foreword by Sir Vivian Fuchs. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992.
- 1902-04 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (Bruce on Scotia).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
First Edition of the narrative of the 1902-04 Scotia Expedition to the Antarctic, published 90 years later, including Bruce's log, photographs, and plans as originally intended. Speak has added an introduction, explanatory notes, and a glossary of scientific terms.
A Very Gallant Gentleman.
Bernacchi, Louis Charles. London: Thornton Butterworth, 1935 [first published 1933] See supra, p. 174.
- 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
Bull, Colin. Email message to David Stam, August 31, 2005:
Barrow’s Boys
Fleming, Fergus. . (London, Granta Books, 1998).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Preview
p. 37, concerning the Parry and Ross Northwest Passage expedition on Isabella and Alexander, 1818: The officers, meanwhile, were supplied with a twenty-five-volume library of Arctic reference books, to which the Naval and Military Bible Society added ninety uplifting tracts to be shared between both ships.
Shackleton Collection.
Rendell, Kenneth. Exhibited at Boston Museum of Science, March 2001.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
Included in the exhibit were: Tennyson, Alfred Lord. Complete Works. Given in 1908 to Lt. Shackleton and the Officers of the Nimrod, and kept in officer’s mess; Swinburne Poems. Signed by Shackleton; South. First ed. Signed by Shackleton; Nautical Almanac. 1908. Shackleton’s copy from the Nimrod; Inscribed portrait of Shackleton; Signed 1914 solicitation letter for the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition; Signed photograph of Frank Hurley’s Winter Night; Cover illustration of South, presented to a Mrs. Pearson.
The Ascent of Denali (Mount McKinley): A Narrative of the First Complete Ascent of the Highest Peak in North America.
Stuck, Hudson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1914.
- 1913-18 US Private Journeys round the Coast and Interior of Alaska (Hudson Stuck, “Archbishop of the Yukon”).
- Arctic Reading: United States
Preview
Unfortunately, most of the readings recorded in Stuck’s first book have only to do with temperature readings, with a few minor exceptions, compared to the prodigious reading recorded in his other books.
“Pechuck”: Lorne Knight’s Adventures in the Arctic.
Montgomery, Richard G. Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1948.
- 1921-23 Canadian Wrangel Island Expedition (Organized by Vilhjalmur Stefansson).
- Arctic Reading: Canada
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Knight was born in 1893, son of a Methodist minister from Oregon. He died on Wrangel Island in 1923 of scurvy, in company with Ada Blackjack.
What books were taken to the Antarctic 100 years ago?
Kerley, Paul. BBC News Magazine 2/24/16 Found on the Internet at https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-35633374.
- Antarctic Reading: General
Preview
The BBC News Magazine of 24 February 2016 has an article by Paul Kerley which lists the books found in a photograph of the book shelves in Shackleton’s cabin aboard Endurance. The titles were deciphered from a digitized image of the shelves in Shackleton’s cabin. The list consists primarily of mostly undistinguished light fiction, about a dozen reference works, and a smattering of books of Arctic (not Antarctic) exploration
Diary of the Discovery Expedition to the Antarctic Regions 1901-1904.
Wilson, Edward. Edited from the Original Mss. in the Scott Polar Research Institute, by Ann Savours. London: Blandford Press, 1966.
- 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
Wilson was a prodigious reader. In addition to the citations below he speaks often of readings on medicine or surgery, presumably technical books he had with him on the expedition. He was also a devout Christian and would read his services when he couldn’t attend or in addition to attendance. Most notable was his reading of Tennyson’s “In Memoriam” during the fatal polar trip.
Jack in the Forecastle; or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale.
Sleeper, John Sherburne. Boston: Crosby, Nicholas, Lee, 1860.
- Whalemen's Reading
Preview
Sleeper was an American sailor, journalist, and politician who was Mayor of Roxbury, Mass., and a member of the Mass. Senate. As a novelist he used the pseudonym of Mawser Martingale, and I suspect this book is autobiographical fiction. He went to sea as a cabin boy in 1809, age 15, and the book is about his first command in the merchant marine in 1821.
Last Places: A Journey in the North
Millman, Lawrence. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1990.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Preview
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.
A Winter Circuit of Our Arctic Coast: A Narrative of a Journey with Dog-Sleds around the Entire Arctic Coast of Alaska.
Stuck, Hudson. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.
- 1913-18 US Private Journeys round the Coast and Interior of Alaska (Hudson Stuck, “Archbishop of the Yukon”).
- Arctic Reading: United States
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One of four travel accounts by the “Archdeacon of the Yukon and the Arctic,” with Walter Harper as companion. “My purpose was an enquiry into their present state, physical, mental, moral and religious, industrial and domestic, into their prospects, into what the government and the religious organizations have done and are doing for them, and what should yet be done” (p. viii). Among other things the archdeacon did a good deal of reading during his journey, not all of which will be captured here.
The Autobiography of a Seaman.
Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald. (London: Richard Bentley, 1872).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Preview
This author is one very aristocratic sailor who had his troubles with the Royal Navy and the British government in the early nineteenth century. Suffice it to say that this is not a voice from the forecastle, but of petulant complaints concerning the “injustice and folly” of the government court (p. 493). There is nothing I could find in this book about polar reading, or any reading at all.
The Private Journal of William Reynolds; United States Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842.
Reynolds, William. London: Penguin Books, 2004.
- 1838-42 U.S. Exploring Expedition (Wilkes).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Preview
A healthy selection of Reynolds journals which includes his official account together with his own interpolations correcting that account. A good example is p. 11: “Captain Wilkes is a man of great talent {great mistake, did not at this time know him}, perhaps genius…. He has had much experience with them [various instruments] since, is an excellent astronomer {all in the wrong, all humbug—a little smattering & much boasting on his part deceived others besides myself}, & well acquainted with the mysteries of chemistry & the operations of natural philosophy.”
Voyages of a Modern Viking.
Hanssen, Helmer. London: George Routledge, 1936.
- Antarctic Reading: General
Preview
For someone who participated in Amundsen’s three major expeditions, went to the South Pole with him in 1910, and was captain of Maud on the later Northeast Passage expedition, Hanssen sounds generally as boring as extreme weather reports, at least in this version. There is no indication of a translator, nor any indication that Hanssen and Amundsen may have had a falling out on the 1918-1920 Northeast Passage trip. So the Fram Museum suggests on its website, citing the journals of other participants as claiming Amundsen fired Hanssen because the designation of Hanssen as captain went to his head. If so, even that excitement is concealed in this book.