Narrative of the North Polar Expedition. U.S. Ship Polaris, Captain Charles Francis Hall Commanding.

Davis, Charles H. Edited under the Directtion of Hon. G. M. Robeson... by Rear-Admiral C. H. Davis, Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1876.
  • 1870-73 US North Pole Expedition of Charles Hall (aboard USS Polaris).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Here is the official report of the Expedition, prepared from the journals of the officers and men, including the incidents of George Tyson’s ice-floe party. William Barr, in his 2016 edition of Bessel’s journal, refers to this as a “sugar-coated” account of the expedition.

Captain Nathaniel Brown Palmer: An Old-Time Sailor of the Sea

Spears, John R. Stonington, CT: Stonington Historical Society, 1996 [First published 1922].
  • 1820-21 American Sealing Voyage to South Shetlands and Antarctic Peninsula aboard Hero and Express (commanded by George Pendleton with Nathaniel Palmer).
  • “Discovery” of Antarctica.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This is a thoroughly hagiographic and somewhat jingoistic account of the American sealer and whaler many have considered the discoverer of the Antarctic continent. There is little about any extracurricular reading on Palmer’s voyage, but there is an emphasis on journals and log books, navigational manuals, and hydrographic charts.

The Private Life of Polar Exploration.

Scott, James Maurice. Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1982.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 65, re Scott’s Northern Party: Levick used to read aloud in the evening, first a chapter a night of David Copperfield, then the Life of Stevenson, then Simon the Jester [William Locke novel]. That was their library, and thus rationed lasted them about half way through the winter…. On Sunday nights they sang with a religious bias.

The Arctic Grail: The Quest for the North West Passage and the North Pole, 1818-1909

Berton, Pierre. New York, Viking, 1988. [Penguin Books ed., 1989].
  • Arctic Reading: General
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The late Pierre Berton (d. 2016) was a Canadian writer on northern affairs combining a lyrical capacity to capture the history of the North with a critical sympathy and perhaps undue haste. Here he covers a century of exploration, ending in the middle of the “Heroic Age” with Peary’s last expedition.

Overland to Starvation Cove: With the Inuit in Search of Franklin 1878-1880.

Klutschak, Heinrich. Trans. and edited by William Barr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. xix, re McClintock’s finding of the boat: In the boat lay two skeletons, both minus the skull, as well as five watches, two double-barrelled guns, and some small books including a Bible and a copy of The Vicar of Wakefield.

Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-ship Essex

Chase, Owen.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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Owen Chase's memoir of the sinking of the Essex by a whale, which inspired Herman Melville's epic Moby-Dick and the film In the Heart of the Sea. Owen Chase was the first mate on the ill-fated American whaling ship Essex, which was attacked and sunk by a sperm whale in the southern Pacific Ocean in 1820. The crew spent months at sea in leaking boats and endured the blazing sun, attacks by killer whales, and lack of food. The men were forced to resort to cannibalism before the final eight survivors were rescued. Chase recorded the tale of the ship's sinking and the following events with harrowing clarity in the Wreck of the Whale Ship Essex: "I turned around and saw him about one hundred rods [500 m or 550 yards] directly ahead of us, coming down with twice his ordinary speed of around 24 knots.

The Antarctic Manual for the Use of the Expedition of 1901.

Murray, George, editor. With a Preface by Sir Clements R. Markham…, Presented to the Expedition by the Royal Geographical Society. London: Royal Geographical Society, 1901.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. vii: Baron Nordenskiöld has told me that, during the voyage of the Vega, when the North-East Passage was discovered, the books most in request were the “blue book” and the “white book,” as they called the Arctic manuals.

Mawson’s Forgotten Men: The 1911-1913 Antarctic Diary of Charles Turnbull Harrisson.

Harrisson, Charles Turnbull. Edited by Heather Rossiter. Miller’s Point, NSW: Pier 9, 2011.
  • 1911-14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (Mawson).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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p. 68, Friday March 8, 1912: After tea I fitted up the batten floor of the canoe (which was not loaded) as a bookshelf, & Hoadley opened the Library—some of the books damp. Rather disappointed in them. Not a poet in the lot. [Footnote 19, p. 291: The ‘Library’ was a selection of books donated by a rich benefactor, Campbell Mackellar.]

The Two Voyages of the ‘Pandora’ in 1875 and 1876.

Young, Allan. (London: Edward Stanford, 1879).
  • 1875-76 Private Expedition to Magnetic North Pole and North West Passage (Captain Allen Young aboard Pandora).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Mr De Wilde was the artist (hydrographic sketches) and J. A Macgahan the correspondent. Young was commander who earlier was the sailing master on McClintock’s Fox in 1857-59, and wrote the article in Cornhill #1 on the Fox, republished in 1875. By this time, Young was in the Naval Reserve, though this was not a Royal Navy mission. He himself paid for it with the help of Lady Franklin and James Gordon Bennett. Left on June 25 with two bags of letters for Alert and Discovery.

Island of the Lost.

Cooper, Paul Fenimore. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s sons, 1961).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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This is an elegant little book posing as a biography of King William Island and a vehicle for telling its indigenous history, the story of the Franklin debacle (prior to discovery of the sunken Erebus), and a fairly brief account of the Franklin Search.

Operation Tabarin: Britain’s Secret Wartime Expedition to Antarctica 1944-46.

Haddelsey, Stephen. By Stephen Haddelsey, with Alan Carroll. Stroud, UK: History Press, 2014.
  • 1944-46 British Covert FIDS Expedition (leaders James Marr and Andrew Taylor).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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A thorough account of the British Secret Operation Tabarin by FIDS attempting to preempt any American or Argentine territorial claims in the Antarctic Peninsula region.This description has only a few indications of reading experiences during a hastily prepared and accident-prone mission.

The Discovery of the North-West Passage by H.M.S. Investigator, Capt. R. M’Clure, 1850, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854.

McClure, Robert John. Edited by Captain Sherard Osborn, C. B., &c…, from the Logs and Journals of Capt. Robert Le M. M’Clure. London: Longman, Brown, 1857.
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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HMS Investigator was one of the ships assigned to the western end of the as yet undiscovered Northwest Passage in the search for Franklin and the hope that his expedition had made it through. By confusion or arrangant independence the Investigator proceeded without its companion ship HMS Enterprise, commanded by Richard Collinson. Caught by the ice, it returned to Hong Kong while Investigator headed eastward into the Passage. The ship spent the next three winters in winter quarters until April of 1854 when the men were found by a rescue team from HMS Resolute and they escaped to the east leaving the ship abandoned. One positive outcome, despite several deaths, was that the voyage definitively established the existence of the Northwest Passage’

The Present State of Hudson’s Bay Containing a Full Description of That Settlement, and the Adjacent Country; and Likewise of the Fur Trade with Hints for Its Improvement, &c. &c….

Umfreville, Edward. Edited with an introduction and notes by W. Stewart Wallace. Toronto: Ryerson Press, 1954. [First published London: Charles Stalker, 1790].
  • Hudson's Bay Company.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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An intimate critique of the activities and business methods of the Hudson's Bay Company and one of the earliest narratives of the fur trade in Western Canada and the Great Lakes region. Umfreville had been in the employ of the Hudson's Bay Company for eleven years from 1771, and was at York Fort in 1782 when it was captured by the French under La Pérouse. Upon his release after the Treaty of Paris in 1783, he joined the rival North West Company and was engaged in exploring a new canoe route from Lake Superior to Lake Winnipeg (via Lake Nipigon). From 1784 to 1788, he served on the North Saskatchewan River, commanding at its most westerly post.

The Lure of the Labrador Wild: The Story of the Exploring Expedition Conducted by Leonidas Hubbard, Jr.

Wallace, Dillon. New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1905.
  • 1903 US Personal Exploring Expedition to Labrador by Leonidas Hubbard Jr. and Dillon Wallace.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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As a young lawyer Wallace met Hubbard, an editor of Outing magazine, in 1900 and in 1903 they departed New York to explore the wilder and hitherto unexplored parts of Labrador. It was a difficult journey in which Hubbard died of starvation and Wallace managed to survive and go on to further explorations and successful books. Hubbard’s wife Mina felt that Wallace had disparaged her husband by implying that Leonidas caused the failure—she went on to her own career as successful competitor of Wallace as a Labrador explorer in the “great race of 1905.” All the reading that I could find was Scriptural and from The Book of Common Prayer.