The Charles W. Morgan Ship’s Books, 1841

Leavitt, John F. Mystic, CT: Mystic Seaport, 1973.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

p. 6: The Morgan sailed on her first voyage September 6, 1841, under command of Captain Norton, with twenty-six-year-old James C. Osborn, also of Edgartown, as second mate and keeper of a journal of the voyage. Osborn must have been literarily inclined for he took a library of over seventy volumes with him, including books on history, travel and memoirs as well as twenty-two volumes of Marryatt’s works.

Scott, Shackleton and Amundsen: Ambition and Tragedy in the Antarctic.

Thomson, David. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002 [1977].
  • Heroic Age 1901-1921.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

A revision of a pre-Huntford critical work on Scott, though he says he didn’t know he was writing a “debunking” biography in 1977. Doesn’t have the acerbic bite of Huntford, but has something critical to say about all three of his subjects.

Along the Labrador Coast.

Townsend, Charles Wendell. Boston: Dana Estes & Company, 1907.
  • 1900? US private Summer Expedition for Birding and Touring the Labrador Coast.
  • Arctic Reading: Canada
 Preview 

It is hard to determine from this book or the internet the date of this engaging tourist journal of the Labrador outports. On p. 98 he refers to the 230 years that the Hudson’s Bay Company had been trading furs from the natives; with a founding date of 1670 we can infer a 1900 date for the trip. He also there notes “No wonder the letters have been interpreted “Here before Christ,” for the company generally get ahead of the missionaries.

The Humorous Side of Arctic Exploration: Laughable Incidents that Break the Monotony of the Hard and Dangerous Work above the Arctic Circle, the Eskimos’ Sense of Humor, and Some Amusing Anecdotes of Northern Life.

MacMillan, Donald Baxter. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, Page, 1923.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
 Preview 

p. 1, on departures for the North Pole: Some one of the crew inadvertently mentioned the fact to one of these scribes (reporters) that we had no reading matter on board for the long Arctic nights…. In the next morning’s issue the fact was called to the attention of the kind people of New York. That afternoon a stream of books was flowing down East 23 Street to the Recreation Pier, carried by young, middle aged, and old, and even trucks. It was the most cosmopolitan library ever assembled, for there was everything, with one exception…and that exception a Bible—not a one. Peary wondered where they all came from & intended to throw them overboard when out to sea.