The Voyages of the ‘Morning’

Doorly, James G. S. Bluntisham, UK: Bluntisham Books, 1995. [First published London: Smith, Elder, 1916].
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

The Morning was a relief ship for Scott’s Discovery expedition. Notable for its piano, given by Clements Markham (the carpenter cut it in half to get it into the wardroom), for the song texts given in the book, apparently composed by Doorly, and the key role of the piano. Doorly was a close friend of Teddy Evans and it was Evans’s influence on Clements Markham that helped get him posted to the Morning and involved in freeing Discovery from the heavy ice of McMurdo sound. Doorly wrote a readable autobiography called In the Wake, which devotes a couple of chapters to his Discovery experience.

Anson’s Voyage Round the World.

Anson, George. By Richard Walter. A New Edition by G.S. Laird Clowes. (London: Martin Hopkinson, 1928).
  • 1740-44 English Naval Voyage to South Seas and Round the World (under George Anson aboard Centurion).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

Judging from his critiques Anson had books with him, though we don’t know how many. He was especially critical of the work of Frazier:

Innocents in the Arctic: The 1951 Spitsbergen Expedition.

Bull, Colin. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2005.
  • 1951 British Spitsbergen Expedition.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

p. 115: Otherwise, when confined to the tent, they talked and, when all subjects had been exhausted, either slept or read. In addition to a few books they had newspapers galore, generously supplied by a Birmingham dealer for safely wrapping the fossils and rock samples. The newspapers were used for extra insulation and to mop up penetrating precipitation. When the level of water in the tent exceeded the mopping capabilities of the newspapers, the occupants encouraged the water into a sump and made a suitable drain hole in the sewn-in ground sheet. They, and we three in the other inland party, were all much disappointed to find that all of the copies of the newspaper were of the same date and the same edition. Consequently we all learned some of the text by heart.

Pictures of Arctic Travel. Greenland.

Hayes, Isaac I. New York: G.W. Carleton & Co., 1881.
  • 1860-61 US North Pole Expedition (aboard United States, commanded by Isaac Hayes).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Hayes short book consists of three prose pictures: The Doctor; The Savage; Snow and Ice.

The Ice Child.

McGregor, Elizabeth. [Novel]. (New York, Dutton, 2001).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

Fictional account of the Franklin search and an obsessive Franklin searcher.

Antarctica Unveiled: Scott’s First Expedition and the Quest for the Unknown Continent.

Yelverton, David E. Boulder, CO: University Press of Colorado, 2000.
  • 1901-04 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott aboard Discovery).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A fairly thorough study of the Discovery expedition (1901-04), very sympathetic to Scott, managing to skewer Huntford’s speculations against Scott in a gentle way in footnote after footnote. His maps of the period are more confusing than helpful, but it is a sound study and a fairly good read. It does seem to me that his attempt to create the sense of a race between the German expedition of Drygalski and the Gauss with Scott’s ventures is purely hypothetical. And he does have a penchant for determinist chapter headings; Preordained Strategies; To the Threshold of Destiny; The Best-Laid Schemes…; Hostages in a Frozen Trap; Slings and Arrows of Misfortune; and The Expeditions Fateful Legacy.

In the Days of the Red River Rebellion.

McDougall, John. Toronto: Briggs, 1903.
  • 1868-73 Red River Rebellion in Saskatchewan.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

McDougall was a rather devout Protestant missionary who (p. 111-113) engaged the Indians in an anti-alcohol petition, a miner episode in the Red River Colony’s rebellion against the Canadian government which had transferred Hudson’s Bay Company land to the new country to the detriment of Métis interests in their land and culture.

Ten Months Among the Tents of the Tuski, with Incidents of an Arctic Boat Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin, as far as the Mackenzie River, and Cape Bathurst.

Hooper, William H. (London: John Murray, 1853).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

William Hulme Hooper (1827-1854) was a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and part of the 1848 expedition aboard the Plover, under the command of Capt. T. E. L. Moore, to search for the ill-fated Franklin expedition. Moore's expedition spent three years in the high Arctic, wintering the first year (1848-1849) on the Chukotsk Peninsula, later sailing to the Beaufort Sea. From there, Hooper made two overland trips up the Mackenzie River to Fort Simpson, on the second of which he travelled overland to Norway House, The Pas, and south through what is now Manitoba to reach the voyageur route back to Montreal, and thence to England (see Arctic Bibliography 7395). This is a very scarce account, seldom mentioned in most histories of Arctic exploration, and often overlooked in the lore of the search for Sir John Franklin and his party. Notwithstanding, Hooper's account is full of interesting information and observations, including detailed descriptions of the life, customs, dwellings, clothing and beliefs of the Chukchis (Tuski), and of the North Alaska Eskimo generally; as well as notes on the Mackenzie Eskimo and Indians, sea and river ice, hunting and trapping, and the character of the territory covered in his journeys.

Salt Water Bubbles; Or, Life on the Wave.

Sleeper, John Sherburne. [Hawser Martingale, pseud.]. Boston, MA: W.M.J. Reynolds, 1854.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

Stories which originally appeared in the Boston Journal, all dealing with all aspects of nautical life in the American merchant service in the early part of the nineteenth century

Scott’s Last Biscuit: The Literature of Polar Travel.

Moss, Sarah. Oxford: Signal Books, 2006. [Published as The Frozen Ship(New York: BlueBridge, 2006).
  • Arctic Reading: General
 Preview 

Polar expeditions have created a literature with its own history and style, and "The Frozen Ship" is a detailed and moving examination of the most intriguing and influential journeys into the eternal ice. Sarah Moss delves into the morbid fascination of expeditions that went terribly awry and the increasing interest in those that were rescued at the last minute, and she pays particular attention to the desire to find and even preserve long-lost explorers. Some of them, like Ernest Shackleton, Richard Byrd, and Roald Amundsen, have become iconic figures, while others, as important in their day, have faded into obscurity. Here, like wayward travelers, they are rescued heroically. (ABEBooks, from Strand entry)

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.

A Forgotten Explorer: Carsten Egeberg Borchgrevink

Evans, Hugh Blackwall. Polar Record 17 (1984) 221-35.
  • 1898–1900 British Antarctic Expedition (Carsten Borchgrevink on Southern Cross).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Account of one of the first to set foot on Antarctica (Cape Adare Jan. 1895). Points out a good number of Borchgrevink’s claims for which there is no evidence, allowing the inference that Borchgrevink was a great liar.