Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer.

Loomis, Chauncey C. New York: Knopf, 1971.
  • 1870-73 US North Pole Expedition of Charles Hall (aboard USS Polaris).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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An excellent account of the life of the most eccentric of Arctic explorers who essentially abandoned his family in Cincinnati to pursue his Arctic dreams. Unprepared and inexperienced in Arctic ways, he adopted to and adapted Eskimo ways of living and survival by living with them for long periods and learning from them their secrets of survival. Both his origins and demise are clouded in mystery.

A Voyage to the South Seas in His Majesty’s Ship the Wager in the Years 1740-1741.

Bulkeley, John and John Cummings. Gunner and Carpenter of the Wager. New York: Robert M. McBride, 1927. [First edition, 1743; Second edition, 1757].
  • 1740-41 English Naval Voyage to the South Seas (aboard Wager).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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Fascinating account of a shipwreck, a potential mutiny, and a Warrant Officer who took it on himself to advise incompetent officers in how to save the lives of the crew. His advice was dependent upon one volume he borrowed from the ship’s Captain.

New Land: Four Years in the Arctic Regions.

Sverdrup, Otto. Two volumes. London: Longmans, Green, 1904.
  • 1898-1902 Swedish Ship and Sledging Expedition to Northern Greenland (Led by Otto Sverdrup aboard Fram).
  • Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
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Volume I:

The Three Voyages of Edmond Halley in the Paramore 1698-1701.

Halley, Edmond. Edited by Norman J. W. Thrower. (London: The Hakluyt Society, 1981). [Vol. II is a Portfolio of Maps].
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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[Note]: Despite an unsuccessful first voyage, Halley retained the confidence of the Admiralty, and his second cruise from September 1699 to September 1700 was successful. He went south as far as 52° into the ice field north of the site of the modern Halley Bay Geophysical Observatory and was in considerable danger, as he was later from a storm off the coast of Africa. (ODNB). Though they were in iceberg infested waters with fogbound conditions, the journals indicate no unusual events.

A Briefe Historie of Muscovia.

Milton, John. Vol. III. Complete Prose Works. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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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 Life of Captain James Cook.

Beaglehole, John C. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974.
  • 1768–79 British Naval Expeditions of Captain James Cook.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This biography together with Beaglehole’s five-volume edition of Cook’s Journals constitute the definitive source on Cook’s voyages and work.

Twenty Years before the Mast, Or Life in the Forecastle. … Contain an Account of His Escapes from Wild Beasts; from the Dangers of War; from British Press-Gangs; from Frequent Shipwrecks; Together with Several Remarkable Dreams… and His Conversion to God.

Isaacs, Nicholas Peter. Written by Himself, and Revised by the Editor of “Thirty Years from Home.” New York: J. P. Beckwith, 1845.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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Memoir of a sailor born in Norway, removed to England after his father’s death, and shipped as cabin boy at age ten. Sailed the world on sealers and New Bedford ships. He became one of many nineteenth-century sailors turned pious proselytizer in the name of the Holy Spirit and Providence. His rather elaborate dream sequences are redolent of John Bunyan, but apart from his dogged spiritual views there is little evidence of education or reading here. There are a few interesting passages:

An Account of a Voyage for the Discovery of a North-West Passage by Hudson’s Streights, to the Western and Southern Ocean of America. Performed in the Year 1746 and 1747, in the Ship California, Capt. Francis Smith , Commander. By the Clerk of the California.

Swaine, Theodore. Two volumes. London: Jolliffe, Corbett, and Clarke, 1748.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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The little found in these volumes concerning reading and writing has to do with the documents of the expedition itself, as well as the account of earlier voyages.

The Hookers of Kew 1785-1911.

Allan, Mea. London: Michael Joseph, 1967.
  • 1839-42 British Antarctic Expedition (James Clark Ross/Terror and Erebus).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Joseph Hooker was part of the Erebus and Terror Antarctic expedition led by James Clark Ross, an expedition poorly equipped for scientific investigation:

Dr John Rae.

Richards, Robert L. Whitby, Yorkshire: Caedmon of Whitby Publishers, 1985.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 35: Rae happily spent the winter [1845] at York Factory. He built a ‘laboratory’ and occupied himself with meteorological observations and he taught some of his men to assist him. The company [HBC] maintained a small library at York and Rae used it to continue his study of natural history, botany, geology and other subjects.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and Round the World: being personal narratives of attempts to reach the North and South Poles; and of an open-boat expedition up the Wellington Channel in search of Sir John Franklin and Her Majesty’s ships “Erebus” and “Terror,” in Her Majesty’s boat “Forlorn Hope,” under the command of the author. To which are added an Autobiography….

M’Cormick, Robert. In Two Volumes. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions

“Caxtons of the North: Mid Nineteenth-century Arctic Shipboard Printing”

Hoag, Elaine. Book History 4 (2001) 81-114.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 109, footnote 39: The catalogue of the Resolute library appears in the first issue (June 1850) of the Aurora Borealis, one of the manuscript newspapers produced on that voyage. The issue is held in the Edward Newell Harrison papers, MS/75/061, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. The catalogue was not reproduced in Arctic Miscellanies, the publication that reprinted selections from the Aurora Borealis after the crew returned home to England. The catalogue of the library on Belcher’s Assistance was actually printed on board ship: A Catalogue of the Library Established on Board H.M.S.Assistance, Captain Sir Edward Belcher, C.B. Commanding the Arctic Squadron in Search of Sir John Franklin and His Companions: Printed and published on Board H.M.S.Assistance, Wellington Channel, Arctic Regions, H. Briantt, Printer, 1853. (1853). A copy of this catalogue is held in the Royal Geographical Society Library bound with other pamphlets concerning the Arctic donated by John Barrow Jr. and given the binder’s title: Arctic Pamphlets, 1852-54.

Blizzard and Fire: A Year at Mawson, Antarctica.

Béchervaise, John. London: Angus and Robertson, 1964.
  • 1959-60 Australian National Antarctic Research Expeditions (ANARE).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This book concerns the ANARE trip to Mawson in 1959. A somehwat odd book in that it is an epistolary account of a year at an Australian base by letters to a variety of friends and relatives, interspersed with a series of newsletters ostensibly for a public audience. He does tell some exciting stories as the base commander, but his references to reading are more utiitarian than inspirational, for example the use of The Australian Pilot to find repair facilities in various places (p. 24). A discussion of Plato and death is more speculative and a rarity for this book (p. 135). However, there are some quietly meditative passages that make the book valuable and are reproduced here even though unrelated to Antarctic reading.

Antarctic Scout

Chappell, Richard Lee. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Chappell was part of a program to send Boy Scouts on Antarctic expeditions, in his case to Operation Deep Freeze II when he was a winterover at Little America. Paul Siple was an earlier participant who became an important American explorer and encouraged this young man who later went to Princeton. The writing is wooden and generally sanctimonious, betraying the author’s youth. Reading is minimal, mostly confined to the Bible (p. 81), though he does find a copy of Murphy’s Oceanic Birds of South America to help his pursuit of ornithology, and he did participate in Little America’s “University of the Antarctic.” At those sessions he studied Morse code and did manage to send off a sample message. He ends with a rather fundamentalist homily based on Matt 28:20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Chappell does not appear to have published anything else.