Report of Winfield S. Schley, Commander, U.S. Navy, commanding Greely relief expedition of 1884

U. S. Navy Dept. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1887.
  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely); 1884 Greely Relief Expedition of 1883 (Commander Winfield S. Schley).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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With its extremely detailed accounting of the provisioning of this expedition, the report lists books ordered for the journey on March 1, 1884, for each of the three ships (Alert, Thetis, and Bear) as follows:

The Life of Charles Dickens.

Forster, John. Three Volumes. Boston, Estes and Lauriat, 1871.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 482, from Volume III: It is also to be noted as in the same spirit, that it was not the loud but the silent heroisms he most admired. Of Sir John Richardson, one of the few who have lived in our days entitled to the name of a hero, he [Dickens] wrote from Paris in 1856. ‘Lady Franklin sent me the whole of that Richardson memoir; and I think Richardson’s manly friendship, and love of Franklin, one of the noblest things I ever knew in my life. It makes one’s heart beat high, with a sort of sacred joy.’ (It is the feeling as strongly awakened by the earlier exploits of the same gallant man to be found at the end of Franklin’s first voyage, and never to be read without the most exalted emotion.)

Matthew Flinders Private Journal, from 17 December 1803 at Isle of France to 10 July 1814 at London.

Flinders, Matthew. Edited and with an Introduction by Anthony J. Brown and Gillian Dooley. Adelaide, NSW, Australia: Friends of the State Library of South Australia, 2005.
  • 1801-03 British Exploring Expedition to Terra Australis (Captain Matthew Flinders aboard Investigator).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
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Captain Matthew Flinders RN (16 March 1774 - 19 July 1814) was an English navigator and cartographer, who was the leader of the first circumnavigation of Australia and identified it as a continent. Flinders made three voyages to the southern ocean between 1791 and 1810. In the second voyage, George Bass and Flinders confirmed that Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania) was an island. In the third voyage, Flinders circumnavigated the mainland of what was to be called Australia, accompanied by an Aboriginal man, Bungaree. (From ABEBooks description, retrieved 5/14/17, of another Flinders work.

The Great Frozen Sea: A Personal Narrative of the Voyage of the “Alert” During the Arctic Expedition of 1875-6.

Markham, Albert Hastings. (London: Dalby Isbister, 1878).
  • 1875-76 British Naval Expedition in Search of North Pole (Captain George Nares aboard Alert and Discovery).
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Captain Markham was the cousin of Clements Markham and this is his account of the Nares voyage and the ship he commanded. He seems to have a commander’s confidence that all is well and must be well on his ship, and shaping the evidence accordingly. Even an unsuccessful and fatal sledge journey becomes a matter of pride and pleasure (p. 289).

Explorers Club Archives II

  • 1881-84 International Physical Year US Expedition to Lady Franklin Bay (led by Adolphus Greely).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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Lady Franklin Bay Expedition, EC2007-07 [Not all of these files have been carefully reviewed and some await further inspection.]

The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries 1837-1967

Stam, David H. Coriolis: Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime History III no. 1 (2012) 59 p. Online through Mystic Seaport.
  • Whalemen's Reading
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p. 1 Abstract: "The Lord's Librarians" describes in new detail the activities of the American Seamen's Friend Society in distributing loan libraries to merchant and naval ships for over 130 years. Based on the archives of the Society in the G.W. Blunt White Library at the Mystic Seaport Museum, the study examines the history of the Society in its efforts towards moral improvement of seamen, fostering temperance, reducing licentiousness, encouraging Sabbath worship and observation, countering swearing, and promoting thrift and financial responsibility among sailors. It examines the largely evangelical collection development policies for these compact 40-45 volume library boxes, and attempts to locate the surviving boxes and surviving books from these libraries. It ends with some unanswered questions which deserve further study.

Voyage of the United States Frigate Potomac…1831-34.

Reynolds, Jeremiah N. New York: Harper, 1835.
  • 1831-34 US Circumnavigation (Downes aboard Potomac ).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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This voyage spent a little time in the Falklands and saw a few icebergs but it was not an Antarctic voyage. Reynolds, however, is an interesting character who influenced Poe with Mocha Dick and Poe died with delirious shouts of Reynolds name, espoused Symmes theory of the hollow earth, and almost single-handedly pushed for the U.S. Exploring Expedition, whose command eventually went to Wilkes. Here Reynolds asks for a strong navy in defense of American commerce, dedicated the work to Secretary and Officers of the Navy (with whom he later fought). His incisive and sharply sardonic style is best scene in his “Correspondence” a few years later with Harlan Davidson, Secretary of the Navy, whom he attacks for his delaying tactics over the expedition, which was approved 4 or 5 years before its departure.

The Winter Night Trip to Advance Base Byrd Antarctic Expedition II 1933-35.

Poulter, Thomas Charles. Mimeograph. “Copyrighted 1973 by Thomas C. Poulter.” 1914.
  • 1933-35 Byrd Second Antarctic Expedition.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Poulter was in command of Little America while Byrd spent his four months alone at Advance Base. Poulter was chosen by Byrd over the older Harold June and Paul Siple. Byrd thought Siple less mature and June unable to stay away from or hold his liquor. This book consists of notes from Poulter’s diaries and memos that passed among the men while at Little America or Advance base. A good deal is about Poulter’s problems in controlling liquor consumption, including his draining many gallons onto the ice.

Obituary: Vilhjalmur Stefansson 1879-1962.

Sullivan, Walter. Geographical Review 53 2 April 1963, p. 291.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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The polar collection that Stef assembled in his later years was initiated by a gift to him of three hundred books by the American Geographical Society. By now the collection, the property of Dartmouth College, numbers some twenty-five thousand bound volumes and forty-five thousand manuscripts, pamphlets, and the like. His widow, the former Evelyn Schwartz Baird, is still its able librarian, and until the end Stef could be seen quietly at work in a corner of the stacks that hold this vast assemblage of polar information.

“There she blows:” A Narrative of a Whaling Voyage, in the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans.

Ely, Ben-Ezra Stiles. Edited…by Curtis Dahl. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1976. [First published 1849.].
  • Whalemen's Reading
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Originally published in 1849, this modern edition of Ben Ely's personal account of whaling off Madagascar aboard the bark Emigrant includes a biographical introduction and much additional information by Ely's great-grandson. Facsimile of original title page. ALBION, p. 202.

Voyage of His Majesty’s Ship Rosamond to Newfoundland and the Southern Coast of Labrador.

Chappell, Edward. London: J. Mawman, 1818.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
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p. 70-71, recounting Chappell’s conversation with an Indian hunter: whilst with the other he laid down his musket upon the trunk of a fallen tree. We offered him rum, which, to our utter astonishment, he refused; but he accepted of some biscuit and boiled pork. The following conversation then ensued between us. We first inquired, where he was going, and at what he had fired. “Me go get salmon gut, for bait, for catchee cod. Me fire for play, at litteel bird.” Observing the word Tower marked on the lock of his musket, we said, "This is an English gun." "May be. Me no get um "of Ingeles; me get um of Scotchee ship: me "givee de Captain one carabou(deer)for um."—" Do you go to-morrow to catch cod?" "Ees: me go to-morrow catchee cod: next day, catchee cod: next day comeseven day (Sunday); me no catchee cod; "me takee *, look upGOD." [Footnote p. 71: * None of the Indians in St. George's Bay are able to read; but they have been taught almost to adore the Bible, by some French Missionary.] We asked if the savage Red Indians, inhabiting the interior of the country, also looked up toGOD: when, with a sneer of the most ineffable contempt, he replied, "<i>No; no lookee upGOD: killee all men dat dem see, "Red Indian no good."—Do you understand the talk of the Red Indians?" "Oh, no; me no talkee likee dem: dem talkee all same dog, 'Bow, wow, wow!'"This last speech was pronounced with a peculiar degree of acrimony: at the same time, he appeared so much offended at our last question, that we did not think it prudent to renew the dialogue.

Eskimo Life.

Nansen, Fridtjof. Translated by William Archer. Second Edition. London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1894.
  • Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
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This work is best seen as Nansen’s defense of the Greenlanders against the onslaughts of “civilization.”

Report on Lady Franklin Bay Expedition of 1883.

Garlington, Ernest A. Washington: Signal Office, 1883. Signal Office Notes No. 10, re the Yantic and Porteus debacle.
  • 1883 Lady Franklin Bay Relief Expedition.
  • Maritime Reading
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p. 25-7: Scientific Outfit of the Lady Franklin Bay Relief Expedition of 1883. Memorandum B, includes the following items:

Roald Amundsen.

Bomann-Larsen, Tor. Foreword by Pen Hadow. Translated by Ingrid Christophersen. Stroud, Glocs., UK: Sutton Publishing, 2006.
  • Antarctic Reading: General
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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 Amundsen’s reading.