Cruising in the Antarctic.

Solyanik, A. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1956.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

Recounts a whaling journey from Odessa to Antarctica in 1952-53 in a flotilla of 16 ships. Rather typical Soviet narrative with great harmony, a few problems heroically overcome, and excellent discipline:

My Life as an Explorer.

Amundsen, Roald. Garden City: Doubleday, 1927.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

A fairly straightforward autobiography of his life, from childhood adventures on the ice, the Belgica expedition and its problems with scurvy, his secret departure for the NW Passage to avoid his creditors, the two years on King William Island, another year near Herschel Island, and completion in 1906. Next he planned a North Pole expedition, but Peary’s claim there clandestinely shifted his focus to the South Pole. He passes over the SP trip quickly, before moving on to his attempt to drift across the North Pole, his interest in aerial exploration (1922), his business difficulties with H.J. Hammer as well as his brother Leon, his dirigible work with Lincoln Ellsworth, and the flight of the Norge in 1926. Throughout he claims he has been misrepresented and sometimes his apologia is convincing, sometimes not; either way it is a lengthy (over 100 pages) exercise in self-justification. He is particularly incensed at Nobile for claiming the Norge expedition was his idea (later attributed to Mussolini), and for any number of contractual difficulties. The work concludes with miscellaneous chapters on Stefansson, on Amundsen’s views on the business of exploration, on food and equipment, and finally an appendix of notes by Riiser-Larsen further refuting Nobile’s claims; these are more dispassionate than Amundsen and therefore more convincing.

Ice Ship: The Epic Voyages of the Polar Adventurer Fram.

Johnson, Charles W. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2014.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

This is a workmanlike biography of a ship, Fridthof Nansen's Fram, and its major voyages: Nansen's attempt to drift to the North Pole in 1893-96; Otto Sverdrup's journey to Ellesmere Land and Alex Heiberg Island, 1898-1902; and Amundsen's Expedition to the South Pole in 1911-12. It is a good retelling of the major adventures of these three motivated if depressing explorers, though there is little new here and some mistakes and questionable emphases. Although the ship is well-known for its well-stocked library, and that is recognized here, there is little about what was in the library, only some general comments about books in certain fields such as botany and other sciences, and a reading from Corinthians for a burial at sea.

A Yachting Cruise in the South Seas.

Wood, C. F. London: H. S. King and Co., 1875.
  • 1872- Private British Voyage to Sandwich Islands (Cunard Line).
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

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.

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 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.

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
 Preview 

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.)

The Rainbow in the North: A Short Account of the First Establishment of Christianity in Rupert’s Land.

Tucker, S. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1852.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

Tucker’s book attempts to vindicate the subjugation of a “barbaric” and “savage” people; people who are uncertain in their survival which “arises very much from their deeply-rooted habits of improvidence” (p. 11). His pride in conversions of the natives thanks to his piety, is belied by an obvious transience of such success. His prose is too unctuous to need repeating here, a significant contrast to the more thoughtful Archdeacon of the Yukon sixty years later. A few samples will suffice.

Americans in Antarctica, 1715-1948

Bertrand, Kenneth J. . New York: American Geographical Society, 1971. (AGS Special Publication No. 39.).
  • Antarctic Reading: General
 Preview 

A thorough account of American operations in Antarctica, from the Falklands in the 1770s to the 1947-48 US Navy “Operation Windmill.” See individual chapters for each expedition covered.

Abandoned: The Story of the Greely Arctic Expedition, 1881-1884.

Todd, Alden L. Introduction by Vilhjalmur Stefansson. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

A compelling account of the tragedies and muted triumphs of the Adolphus Washington Greely Expedition. Stefansson’s introduction is fascinating for its discussion of cannibalism and what he calls “rabbit starvation” or “protein poisoning” which makes the case that those who died were the more likely cannibals than the survivors. Todd himself calls his story “essentially one of the physical and moral courage displayed by a small group of men abandoned to hunger and cold in the distant, early days of Arctic work” (p. xix).

Roald Amundsen.

Bomann-Larsen, Tor. Foreword by Pen Hadow. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. Stroud, Glocs., UK: Sutton Publishing, 2006.
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
 Preview 

Bomann attempts to do to Amundsen what Huntford did to Scott. Most of the time he refers to Amundsen as “the polar explorer” as if he thought himself the only one. Apart from a reference to Amundsen’s childhood reading of and fascination with Sir John Franklin, I found nothing about reading.

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.

Narrative of a Second Expedition to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1825, 1826, and 1827,… Including an Account of the Progress of a Detachment to the Eastward, by John Richardson.

Franklin, John, Sir. London: John Murray, 1828. [Facsimile ed. NY: Greenwood Press, 1969].
  • 1819-22 and 1825-27 John Franklin Overland Journeys with John Richardson.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. xvii, on supplies for the expedition: There was likewise an ample stock of tobacco, a small quantity of wine and spirits, marquees and tents for the men and officers, some books, writing and drawing paper, a considerable quantity of cartridge-paper, to be used in preserving specimens of plants…together with many articles to be used at winter-quarters, for the service of the post, and for the supply of our Indian hunters….