The Charles W. Morgan Ship’s Books, 1841

Leavitt, John F. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport, 1973.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 6: The Morgan sailed on her first voyage September 6, 1841, under command of Captain Norton, with twenty-six-year-old James C. Osborn, also of Edgartown, as second mate and keeper of a journal of the voyage. Osborn must have been literarily inclined for he took a library of over seventy volumes with him, including books on history, travel and memoirs as well as twenty-two volumes of Marryatt’s works.

To the Pole: The Diary and Notebook of Richard E. Byrd, 1925-1927.

Byrd, Richard Evelyn. Edited by Raimund E. Goerler. Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press [1996].
  • 1928-30 First U.S. Antarctic Expedition (Byrd on City of New York).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Goerler’s edition has nothing to do with Antarctica other than Byrd’s having read about Scott’s death on returning from the South Pole:

Dead Reckoning: The Untold Story of the Northwest Passage.

McGoogan, Ken. Toronto: HarperCollins, 2017.
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

McGoogan claims to bring a new integrative emphasis to the indigenous elements involved in the search for the Northwest Passage adding to the British focus on the Royal Navy. The work is a broad overview of this history but not so innovative as it seems to claim. His final chapter 32 is called “Erebus and Terror Validate Inuit Testimony,” citing the discovery of the two ships (2014, 2016) as Inuit Vindication.

Glimpses of the Northland: Sketches of Life among the Cree and Salteaux Indians.

Santmier, Arthur. Chicago: Published for the Author by S. K. J. Chesbro, 1905.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 28: At God’s Lake the work of teaching a school was of a different character. No missionary or teacher had been stationed there, and parents and children were alike totally ignorant of the nature of a school. I arrived at God’s Lake in early September and at once commenced work. The church was a slimsy structure, very cold, and the roof leaked so badly as to render it untenable in rainy weather. There were no desks, chairs or black boards. A few books and slates I brought from Oxford House. A number of children were orphans. I plainly announced in the preceding Sabbath services that only children of school age, that is, from six to fourteen years, would be received, and that I did not conduct a nursery, nor did I want a wife, and therefore grown-up girls could not attend the school, for their sole object in coming was to impress the school-teacher with their charms and thus win a husband if possible.

The Red River Library: A Search after Knowledge and Refinement.

Castling, Leslie D. Readings in Canadian Library History. Edited by Peter McNally. Toronto: Canadian Library Association, 1986, p. 153-66.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

p. 154: Consequently, books were introduced into the colony only a year after the first party of settlers arrived at York Factory in 1812. The children “were instructed in arithmetic, reading, and writing, using books furnished at Selkirk’s expense from the British and Foreign School Society.” Lord Selkirk was very involved in ordering book sources for the community. HBD conducted an inventory including books in 1822, and again in 1825.

The White Desert.

Barber, Noel. New York: Thomas W. Crowell, 1958.
  • 1955-58 TAE: Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Fuchs and Hillary).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Barber was a British journalist under contract to write for the Daily Mail on the Fuchs/Hillary Trans-Antarctic Expedition. He spent the austral summer of 1957-58 in Antarctica, mainly at McMurdo but making two substantial visits to the South Pole and was there when Hillary and then Fuchs arrived in 1958. He takes a British anti-Hillary stance on the controversy over Hillary’s arrival at the SP and makes him into a quite unattractive figure. But he is not uncritical of Fuchs either, finding him stuffy, portentous, too proud to accept help offered by the Americans, but accepting it on a number of dire occasions. Nor does he note how Adm. Dufek is complicit in the feud of Fuchs and Hillary by encouraging Hillary to go to the Pole on his plane when it should have been none of Dufek’s business. He rather simply sees Dufek as an innocently generous American with little agenda of his own.

Mariner’s Sketches, Originally Published in the Manufacturers and Farmers Journal, Providence.

Ames, Nathaniel. Revised, Corrected and Enlarged by the author. Providence: Cory, Marshall and Hammond, 1830.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

The author Nathaniel Ames was the son of the statesman, Fisher Ames (1758-1808), of Dedham, Massachusetts, and was a congressman from 1789 to 1797. Nathaniel was named for his grandfather, Nathaniel Ames, famous for the Ames Almanacs, which were the inspiration to Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard's Almanac".

Ice Pilot: Bob Bartlett.

Sarnoff, Paul. New York: Julian Messner, 1966.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

A juvenile audience intended here, but a good overview and a few things wrong.

In Search of a Siberian Klondike as Narrated by Washington B. Vanderlip the Chief Actor and Herein Set Forth by Homer B. Hulbert.

Vanderlip, Washington V. New York: The Century Co., 1908.
  • 1896 Russian-Sponsored Overland Expedition by American W. V. Vanderlip in Search of Gold.
  • Arctic Reading: Russia
 Preview 

Hard to know whether the charm of this book is to the narrator or amanensis, but it is a delight to read both for its human interactions and its elements of natural history and hunting. These exxcerpts give some flavor of the book, and there are a few comments on language and literature.

Explorers Club Archives II

  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, EC2007-07 [Not all of these files have been carefully reviewed and some await further inspection.]

Twelve Came Back.

Brown, Peter Lancaster. London: Robert Hale, 1957.
  • 1952-53 Australian Heard Island Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

An account of an Australian expedition (1952-53) to Heard Island between Kerguélen Islands and the Antarctic continent, in which two of fourteen members died (one frozen, another drowned). A rather pedestrian account but there are a few interesting passages:

Tales of a Voyager to the Arctic Ocean, in Three Volumes.

Gillies, R. P. London: Henry Colburn, 1826.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Gillies takes a Chaucerian approach to his Tales, interspersing short chapters on the Voyage with a series of lengthy stories by his companions on this fictional whaler, Leviathan. The stories are either based right at home in England or Scotland, or have an element of the horror story to them.