p. 281, in “The Rotation Method” section (p. 279-96): Starting from a principle is affirmed by people of experience to be a very reasonable procedure; I am willing to humor them, and so begin with the principle that all men are bores. Surely no one will prove himself so great a bore as to contradict me in this. The principle possesses the quality of being in the highest degree repellent, an essential requirement in the case of negative principles, which are in the last analysis the principles of all motion. It is not merely repellent, but infinitely forbidding; and whoever has this principle back of him cannot but receive an infinite impetus forward, to help him make new discoveries. For; if my principle is true, one need only consider how ruinous boredom is for humanity, and by properly adjusting the intensity of one’s concentration upon this fundamental truth, attain any desired degree of momentum. Should one wish to attain the maximum momentum, even to the point of almost endangering the driving power, one need only say to oneself: Boredom is the root of all evil. Strange that boredom, in itself so staid and stolid, should have such power to set in motion. The influence it exerts is altogether magical, except it is not the influence of attraction, but of repulsion.
Either/Or
- Arctic Reading: General
An Account of Several Late Voyages & Discoveries to the South and North towards the Streights of Magellan, the South Seas, the Vast Tracts of Land beyond Hollandia Nova, &c.: also towards Nova Zembla, Greenland or Spitsberg, by Sir John Narborough, Captain Jasmen Tasman, Captain John Wood, and Frederick Martin of Hamburgh….
- Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
- Maritime Reading
The purpose of this voyage was to establish trading relations between Britain and South America and the South Seas. Narborough did claim for Britain some territory in Argentina, lost some of his men as hostages in Peru, but failed in his primary mission.
A Two Years’ Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia, and the River Plate: A Narrative of Life in the Southern Seas.
- 1854-56 British Patagonian Mission Society Expedition to Southern Atlantic (Captain William Park Snow aboard Allen Gardiner).
- Maritime Reading
A fraught voyage with conflicting commands for sea matters and spiritual matters, to which Captain Snow took umbrage.
Whaling Will Never Do for Me: The American Whaleman in the Nineteenth Century.
- Maritime Reading
Whalemen's Reading
An artful account of nineteenth-century whaling, with fascinating chapters on the overall industry, crime and punishment, relations and legal complications with US consular officials, desertion, religion, women (prostitutes and wives), ceremonial occasions, and an Honolulu riot.
Does Anyone Read Lake Hazen?
- 1957-58 Canadian International Geographical Year Ellesmere Island Expedition.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Describes a Canadian expedition to northern Ellesmere Island 1957-58 as part of the International Geophysical Year.
The Log of the Scotia Expedition, 1902-4.
- 1902-04 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (Bruce on Scotia).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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.
Saskatchewan Journals and Correspondence. Edmonton House 1795-1800; Chesterfield House 1800-1802.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. ??, Peter Fidler at Norway House in 1800: But he provided himself very well with the means to spend profitably any time he could take off from fur trading or hunting buffalo, for he undoubtedly took to Chesterfield House the instruments, nautical almanacs and books which had been sent to him by the ship of 1799 and on which he had spent no less than £30 out of his salary of £60 for season 1798-99. [Footnote 6: The books sent to Fidler in 1799 were Poets & Novels; Hennes Eng.; Goldsmith’s Grecian History and his Roman History; Charles Hutton’s Mathematical and Philosophical Dictionary; his Compendious Measurer; Diarian Miscellany; John Gay’s Fables; Guide to old age; Charles Vyse’s Arithmetic; an abridged Buffon’s Natural History; Samuel Hearne’s Journey to the Northern Ocean; Monthly Reviews; Annual Register; John Imison’s School of Art; Samuel Vince’s Practical Astronomy; John Wilson’s Trigonometry; and Leadbeater’s Drawing. p. lxxxv-lxxxvi]
Jack in the Forecastle; or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale.
- Whalemen's Reading
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.
The Rules of the Game: Jutland and British Naval Command.
- 1915-16 Battle of Jutland (North Sea)—Royal Navy.
- Maritime Reading
Re the Dreadnaught sailors bored at Scappa Flow in the Orkneys.
Arctic Odyssey: The Diary of Diamond Jenness 1913-1916.
- 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. xxi: The author [Jenness] was unusually fond of Homer’s The Odyssey. In the summer of 1906, as one of only two students in a Greek class with Professor William von Zedlitz at Victoria University College, Wellington, New Zealand, he was invited to read The Odyssey each Friday evening in Greek at his professor’s home…. during the seven months he wandered about southwestern Victoria Island with his Copper Eskimo friends, in 1915, my father often found moments for reading passages in and obtaining spiritual comfort from a small copy of The Odyssey he carried with him. This book evidently had a special meaning to him, and he continued to extract both pleasure and comfort from it on later occasions, including a time two years later when he was in the muddy wartime trenches in France.
To the Sixth Continent: The Second German South Polar Expedition.
- 1911-13 Second German Antarctic Expedition (Filchner).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Filchner’s original plans mirrored Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic expedition a few years later, with two ships and men starting from both the Weddell Sea and the Ross Sea then meeting mid-way. Shackleton and Nordenskjöld helped him get a ship, the Deutschland, but he could get only one and went only to the Weddell Sea. He named the iceshelf after Kaiser Wilhelm II, but the Kaiser renamed it after Filchner. The ship was trapped in ice but was freed in the austral summer of 1912. The expedition is noted for its animosities, hostility not indicated in the passages here.
Yachting in the Arctic Seas or Notes of Five Voyages of Sport and Discovery in the Neighbourhood of Spitzbergen and Novaya Zemlya
- 1858-59 British Private Journeys of "Sport and Discovery" (James Lamont).
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
p. 4: In an unpretending little work, descriptive of my former voyages, I had enunciated most strongly the opinion that it would for ever prove impossible to approach the Pole of the earth in ships; but, from reading the accounts of the subsequent voyages of Norwegian walrus-hunters, from an attentive study of the ever-increasing mass of Arctic literature, and from muchconversation and correspondence with those learned theorists who, without ever having left their own firesides, stoutly maintain that there is ‘no difficulty whatever in sailing to the North Pole,’ I was induced to consider whether my own opinion—however practically formed—might not have been too hastily adopted after all.
The Whaling Industry; Exhibition of Objects Illustrating the Whaling Industry and the Natural History of Whales … List of Essex County Whaling Vessels. List of Pictures of Whaling Vessels in the Marine Room. List of Log-books of Whaling Vessels in the Library of the Essex Institute. List of Books on Whales and Whaling in the Salem Public Library …
- Whalemen's Reading
Autobiographical manuscript in the AMNH [RB Collection. J-3]
- Arctic Reading: United States
p. 1: Perhaps the first awakening of my interest in these regions came from reading Nansen’s “Farthest North.”
Antarctic Destinies: Scott, Shackleton and the Changing Face of Heroism.
- Heroic Age 1901-1921.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Deals largely with the reversal of reputations of Scott’s decline and Shackleton’s growth throughout the 20th century, and the balancing of the two in the first decade of the 21st century. Unfortunately, this is a long book that should have been a short one. She insists on recounting the set pieces of all the voyages with individual chapters on the English expeditions (Discovery, Nimrod, Terra Nova, and Endurance), with minimal nods to Bruce, Filchner and others less preoccupied with the Pole that the two Englishmen. She tries hard to achieve a balance between the two but seems by the epilogue to be favoring late arguments on behalf of Scott, even when the arguments are weak (e.g. Fiennes claim that only one who has been there can assess Scott in the Antarctic). There is nothing that I found about reading or any non-curricular activity to help keep the men sane, though she suggests that a number went bonkers. A disappointing work which ignores the “destiny” of its title.