The Journal of Rochfort Maguire, 1852-1854: Two Years at Point Barrow, Alaska, aboard HMS Plover in the Search for Sir John Franklin.

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During the Franklin Search it appeared that Franklin’s ships might well have made it through the Northwest Passage and might be met at the western end of the Passage at Point Barrow or the Baring Strait. The Plover was given the ultimate but fruitless duty of looking for that possibility.

Farther North than Nansen. Being the voyage of the Polar Star.

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Abruzzi’s expedition divides neatly into the two parts described in these volumes. The first volume deals with the sea voyage of the Polar Star, the second with Umberto Cagni’s sledging journey toward the North Pole. Much of the second volume is by Cagni who had taken over command because of Abruzzi’s injuries.

The Light that Failed.

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The Memorial University in St Johns, Newfoundland, has a copy of Kipling’s The Light that Failed. (Revised ed. New York 1899). It has a note on the cover that “This book was on the “Roosevelt” 83 degrees North, the time Perry [Peary] discovered the North Pole 1909.” Question is whether this might have been a title from the American Seamen’s Friend Society portable library that went on that voyage and is now at Mystic Seaport library, but lacking the books from the box.

The Voyage of Captain Bellingshausen to the Antarctic Seas 1819-1821

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Only a fraction of Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin Bellingshausen’s (aka Thaddeus, 1778-1852) long career in the Russian Navy was devoted to Antarctic exploration, his two-year expedition exploring Antarctic in 1819-21. It was nonetheless a notable venture as the second circumnavigation of the continent (the first was by Captain Cook in 1773-74), and the first actual sighting of the Continent in January 1820. His discovery of Alexander Island and the naming of the Bellingshausen Sea were not much honored in Russia since they were of little immediate practical use, but his achievements are now much more fully recognized, At least as translated and then edited in this version, Bellingshausen appears to have an easy-going if formal style of writing and shows himself to be a most judicious man in both his navigation and his leadership of the voyage, a character much doubted by his critics.