Summary [from ABEBooks]: In becoming "a useful man" on the maritime stage, Matthew Fontaine Maury focused light on the ills of a clique-ridden Navy, charted sea lanes and bested Great Britain's admiralty in securing the fastest, safest routes to India and Australia. He helped bind the Old and New worlds with the laying of the transatlantic cable, forcefully advocated Southern rights in a troubled union, and preached Manifest Destiny from the Arctic to Cape Horn. Late in life, he revolutionized warfare in perfecting electronically detonated mines. Maury's eagerness to go to the public in person and in print on the questions of the day riled powerful men in business and politics, and the U.S., Confederate and Royal navies. They dismissed him as the "Man on the Hill." Over his career, Maury more than once ran afoul of Jefferson Davis, and Stephen R. Mallory, secretary of the Confederate States Navy. He argued against eminent members of the nation's emerging scientific community in a decades-long debate over science for its own sake versus science for the people's sake. Through the political, social and scientific struggles of his time, however, Maury had his share of powerful allies, like President John Tyler; but by the early 1870s they, too, were in eclipse or in the grave.
Matthew Fontaine Maury, Father of Oceanography: A Biography, 1806-1873.
- Whalemen's Reading
The South Pole: An Account of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the ‘Fram,’ 1910-1912.
- 1910-12 Norwegian National Antarctic Expedition (Amundsen on Fram).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
Volume I, p. 68: aboard the Fram: We carried an extraordinarily copious library; presents of books were showered upon us in great quantities. I suppose the Fram’s library at the present moment contains at least 3,000 volumes.
Voyage to Desolation Island.
- 1970 French Expedition to Kerguélen Islands.
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
This Frenchman seems a bit obsessed with boredom, as shown on his travel book to the Kerguélen Islands. The week-long voyage provides “the indispensable prelude to getting to know any unknown country: waiting and boredom.” “Isn’t having nothing to do the supreme test, more even than suffering? Whoever can fill the emptiness of his being, where there is nothing more to occupy it, will survive. He will overcome the cruelest torture: time without limit and without end. Pain keeps one occupied; the man who suffers sees himself in his torment.
The Seaman’s Library Manual.
- Maritime Reading
Intro. By Christopher Morley: I have seen the Green Box [American Seamen’s Friend Society library boxes] in use aboard American ships at sea, and I know what it means…to the reader off duty.
Innocents on the Ice: A Memoir of Antarctic Exploration, 1957.
- 1957-58 Operation Deep Freeze I. Ellesworth Station. (Finn Ronne).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
An account of the International Geophysical Year expedition to the Weddell Sea with Captain Finn Ronne, 1956-58, with emphasis on the stresses and conflicts between the military captain and the civilian scientists. Behrendt is unusual in noting, mostly from his daily journal, a substantial amount of reading during the winter at Ellsworth Station. These readings included Ronne’s own Antarctic Conquest (p. 24); War and Peace (p. 58); The Rebel (Camus) and Stefansson’s Arctic Manual (p. 114); Gods Graves and Scholars (Ceram: p. 122); Thurber (p. 136); Cold (Gould: p. 140); thesaurus (p. 153); The White Desert (Giaever: p. 158 with a long quote); Mrs Warren’s Profession (Shaw) and Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck: p. 170); The Rain Cave: p. 189); Of Whales and Men (R.B. Robertson: p. 201); Life on the Mississippi (Twain: p. 214); The Life of Greece (Durant: p. 223); Scott’s Last Expedition (p. 320); Time magazine (p. 323); Merck Manual (p. 346); Human Destiny (LeComte de Nouilly: p. 371); The Wall (Hersey: p. 374).
Life in a Man-of-War, or Scenes in “Old Ironsides” during her Cruise in the Pacific
- Maritime Reading
p. 3, Preface: CRITICS avaunt! curl not your lips with scorn, Do let my humble Sketches pass scot-free— you will find them but the uncouth "YARNS" Of an unlettered wanderer on the sea.
Cosmogony: or Thoughts on Philosophy.
- 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
- Arctic Reading: Great Britain
Merrill was apparently on Kane’s 2d expedition for which he kept a journal and meteorological record (p. 14), and worked with Dr. Vreeland in observing auroras (p. 18-9, citing Kane I, p. 425)
The American Traveller: Or, Observations on the Present State, Culture and Commerce of the British Colonies in America.
- Hudson's Bay Company.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
Cluny wrote this after a year at HBC’s York Factory, attacking the Company for its monopoly and the suspicion they were hiding knowledge of the Northwest Passage.
Arctic Rovings; Or, The Adventures of a New Bedford Boy on Sea and Land.
- Whalemen's Reading
A youthful autobiographical account of the cruelty of unjust captains in exercising their power. The whaler was the Condor and the Captain a Mr. Whiteside. Records various incidents that “relieve the monotony of sea life”: a man overboard; a suicide under delirium tremens; beatings for no apparent reason by a vindictive captain; the thrill of “There she blows!”
Vihjalmur Stefansson, Robert Bartlett, and the Karluk Disaster: A Reassessment.
- 1913-16 Canadian Arctic Expedition (Led by Stefansson with Captain Bob Bartlett commanding the Karluk).
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 12: Several of the ship’s company would later recall that Stefansson had been reading about the Jeannetteexpedition just before he left [the Karlak], and they speculated that fear had driven him away.
Memo
- 1910-14 British National Antarctic Expedition (Scott on Terra Nova).
- Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
AMNH President, Henry Fairfield Osborne: I am inexpressibly shocked and grieved to learn of the disaster that has overtaken the members of the Scott Expedition to the South Pole. The blow is as unexpected as it is crushing. Captain Amundsen confidently expected that the Scott party would reach the tent, records and welcome which he left at Solheim. Only recently in conversation, both Captain Amundsen and Sir Ernest Shackleton have expressed to me their expectation of soon hearing favorably from this fourth attempt to conquer the South Pole. Neither expressed the least doubt as to the result. It is a fresh demonstration of the great hazards attending extreme Arctic exploration. …
Weird and Tragic Shores: The Story of Charles Francis Hall, Explorer.
- 1870-73 US North Pole Expedition of Charles Hall (aboard USS Polaris).
- Arctic Reading: United States
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.
1906-08 SS Roosevelt Library, 1906, 1908 (Commander Robert Peary)
- Maritime Reading
This list comprises those books known to be on Peary’s SS Roosevelt, books now surviving at Mystic Seaport. At some point these books were placed in the loan library box, but it appears to have no connection to any contents of the American Seamen’s Friend Society Loan Library that also went on these two voyages. A note with the library case, however, says that a number of books had been pilfered in Nova Scotia before the carpenter put chicken wire on it to protect the remainder.
Tammarniitt (mistakes): Inuit Relocation in the Eastern Arctic, 1939-63.
- Arctic Reading: Inuit and other indigenous people
Examines government involvement in Northern Canada which led to relocation of Inuit from the east coast of Hudson's Bay to the high Arctic, the Henik Lake and Garry Lake famines, the establishment of Whale Cove in response to inland famines in the Keewatin, and the second wave of state expansion in the 1950's.
In the Days of the Red River Rebellion.
- Arctic Reading: Canada
p. 26-27, winter of 1868-69 near Edmondton: Most of our reading was done by the time tallow dip or chimney fire; our literature was limited, and of the ancient type; one thousand miles to the nearest post gave us very little trouble with our mail.