Norris’s turn-of-the-century novel is loosely based on George Washington De Long’s U.S. North Polar expedition aboard the Jeannette (1879-81). It borrows freely from the locale (Wrangell Island and environs), the beset and crushed ship, the forced march on ice and pressure ridges, the heroic commander, the few survivors finally rescued. He adds the love interest, a strong-minded woman who resists the commander, succumbs, marries, and subtly convinces the hero that he is the one who must achieve the North Pole for the United States, knowing his safe return to be doubtful. He sails from New York in a new ship clearly modeled on Nansen’s Fram. Sources in Greely’s expedition and parallels with Robert E. Peary, who had already begun his North Pole quest and was in Northern Ellesmere land at the time of publication, are easily drawn.
A Man’s Woman.
- Arctic Reading: United States
Down the Mackenzie and Up the Yukon in 1906.
- 1906 Canadian Overland Journey of Elihu Stewart.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Stewart in this book seems to dwell on monotony. The monotony of the treeless plains (p. 34); of the river journey which made him fall asleep (p. 131); “we had left behind us the misery and want as well as the dull monotony of civilized life” (p. 152); “…the white man acts as if there were no tomorrow,” while the native is never in a hurry: “The dull monotony of life at a trading post in unsettled Canada could hardly fail to have this effect. Procrastination is common enough everywhere, but the complacent way in which these people, The dull monotony of life at a trading post in unsettled Canada could hardly fail to have this effect. Procrastination is common enough everywhere, but the complacent way in which these people…” (p. 250-51); all this “to break the dull monotony of their lives” even with the danger of sleepiness (p. 256).
Come North with Me: An Autobiography.
- Antarctic Reading: General
Balchen, Bernt, 1899-1979—Norwegian/American Explorer and Pilot. From a very early age Balchen was fascinated by the allure of the Polar regions and the prospect of using aviation to explore them. From 1925 until well after World War II he was involved in many of the most dramatic and often dangerous exploits of many of the Polar explorers and he knew most of them: Amundsen, Nobile, Ellsworth, Byrd, etc. and he is widely believed to be the first person to fly over both Poles, with Amundsen in the North and Byrd in the South. He held dual citizenship of both Norway and the United States, and served in the US Army Air Force in secret operations supporting the Norwegian resistance during the World War II.
Jack in the Forecastle; or, Incidents in the Early Life of Hawser Martingale.
- Whalemen's Reading
Sleeper was an American sailor, journalist, and politician who was Mayor of Roxbury, Mass., and a member of the Mass. Senate. As a novelist he used the pseudonym of Mawser Martingale, and I suspect this book is autobiographical fiction. He went to sea as a cabin boy in 1809, age 15, and the book is about his first command in the merchant marine in 1821.
The Cruise of the ‘Antarctic’ to the South Polar Regions.
- 1893-95 Norwegian Whaling Expedition (Henrik Bull aboard Antarctic).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Essentially a Norwegian/English whaling and sealing expedition in which the crew suffered no major deprivations or hardships other than hurricanes around the Kerguélens where the ship chiefly spent the ‘summer’ of 1893-94 before returning to Melbourne. The first part of the expedition made catches of £3000 pounds in value, but an intermediate voyage during the winter to the Campbell Islands almost wrecked the ship [Bull was back in Australia] and repairs ate up all the profits.
Étoffe du pays: Lower St. Lawrence Sketches.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
This alleged children’s book is undated but probably describes events and publication of the mid-1920s. A couple of jems are worth recording from this delightful book:
The Lord’s Librarians: The American Seamen’s Friend Society and their Loan Libraries 1837-1967
- Whalemen's Reading
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.
Antarctica: The Worst Place in the World.
- 1964-65 Operation Deep Freeze.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Baum was a NYTimes reporter and photographer assigned to Operation Deep Freeze for later expeditions. The book is really quite a crude one with a large number of historical inaccuracies, but it has some appeal to romantisizers of the worst place in the world.
Explorations in the Far North: Being the Report of an Expedition under the Auspices of the University of Iowa during the Years 1892, ’93, and ’94.
- 1892-94 US University of Iowa Expedition to Far North.
- Arctic Reading: United States
This expedition was more ethnographic than geographic, dealing with Cree, Athabaskan, as well as natural history of the Mackenzie region, and venturing as far as Herschel and Wrangel.
The People of the Polar North: A Record.
- Greenland.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
But, as its title implies, it is first and foremost an account of the most northerly dwelling people in the world, that is to say, of the little Eskimo group of nomads who wander from settlement to settlement between Cape York, North of Melville Bay, and Cape Alexander (approximately therefore between 76˚ and 78˚ N. latitude), and who are called in this book the Polar Eskimos [Editor’s Preface].
Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe, from the Year 1833 to 1836.
- Whalemen's Reading
Volume I:
Memoirs and Travels of Mauritius August, Count de Benyowsky. Consisting of his Military Operations in Poland, His Exile into Kamchatka….
- 1768-70 Beniowsky Journey and Exile in Kamchatka.
- Arctic Reading: Europe including Scandinavia
Exciting story of exile in Kamchatka and the conspiracy to escape. [See also August von Kotzebue’s dramatization of this story: Count Benyowsky; Or, the Conspiracy of Kamschatka, a Tragic-Comedy, in Five Acts.Theatre-Royal, Drury-Lane. Translated from the German by R. W. Render. London: New York: Naphtali Judah, 1799.
In the Strange South Seas.
- Maritime Reading
p. 10-11: So, to The Man Who Could Not Go, I address this book ---to the elderly, white-waistcoated city magnate, grave autocrat of his clerkly kingdom (never lie to me, sir what was your favourite reading in the sixties, and why were you a very fair pistol shot, right up to the time when you were made junior manager ?)—to the serious family solicitor, enjoying his father’s good old practice and house, and counting among the furnishings of the latter, a shelf of Marryats, Mayne Reids, and Michael Scotts, wonder fully free of dust—to the comfortable clergyman, immersed in parish cares, who has the oddest fancy at times for standing on dock-heads, and snifling up odours of rope and tar—to all of you, the army of the brave, unwilling, more or less resigned Left Behinds, who have forgotten years ago, or who will never forget while spiring masts stand thick against blue skies, and keen salt winds wake madness in the brain—to all I say: Greeting l and may the tale of another’s happier chance send, from the fluttering pages of a book, a breath of the far-off lands and the calling sea.
Books Afloat & Ashore: a History of Books, Libraries, and Reading among Seamen during the Age of Sail.
- Whalemen's Reading
p. 4: In 1631, when Captain Thomas James fitted out his vessel in Bristol for a voyage in search of the Northwest Passage, he purchased ‘A Chest full of the best and choicest Mathematicall bookes that could be got for money in England; as likewise Master Hackluite and Master Purchase, and other books of Journals and Histories. [see C Miller, ed. Voyages of Captain Luke Fox of Hull, Hakluyt Soc. London 1894, p. 265-67, 606 p.]
Voices in Stone; A Personal Journey into the Arctic Past.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Voices in Stone is a personal journey of discovery, a portrait and a history of the human presence in the far northern regions of Canada. Archaeological investigations have provided us with a window into the world of the Palaeo- and Neo- eskimos who occupied the High Arctic intermittently for more than 4000 years. The book tells the story of the search for evidence of ancient human settlements on the central east coast of Ellesmere Island and the exciting discovery of Norse artifacts in thirteenth-century Neoeskimo winter houses. In 1818, Sir John Ross made the first recorded Western contact with descendants of the Neoeskimos, the Polar Eskimos or Inughuit of North Greenland. His entry into Baffin Bay led the way for Western whalers, explorers, and North Pole seekers, whose presence turned out to have dramatic consequences for the Inughuit. Voices in Stone is not only an account of the discovery of archaeological materials in the High Arctic, but a story of life in remote, isolated research camps occasionally threatened by sudden, violent storms or curious polar bears.