Benjamin Leigh Smith: a forgotten pioneer.

Credland, Arthur C. Polar Record 20 (125) May 1980, p. 127-145.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Smith lived from 1783 to 1913 and took five important Arctic voyages to Novaya Zemblya, Svalbard, and Franz Josef Land. The last, in Eira, sank in August 1881 near Mys Barentsia in Franz Josef Land.

The Ice Child.

McGregor, Elizabeth. [Novel]. (New York, Dutton, 2001).
  • 1848-59 The Franklin Search.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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Fictional account of the Franklin search and an obsessive Franklin searcher.

Icy Hell: Experiences of a News Real Cameraman in the Aleutian Islands, Eastern Siberia and the Arctic Fringe of Alaska.

Hudson, Will E. London: Constable & Company, 1937.
  • 1930s? US Hunting Trip to Alaska, Aleutian Islands, and Siberia.
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 59: A few hours out of Petropavlosk as we headed north we found the ice! Into the Arctic ice at last! What a thrill, to say the least. All of the polar stories that I had read came back to me. From the time I was a small boy and read my first stories of adventures in the ice I had dreamed and longed for the experience of being in this ice wilderness. Mental pictures of Deschev, Bering, Cook, Kane, Amundsen, Scott, Peary, Shackleton, Stefansson and the host of others who have written their names in the pages of North and South Polar exploration passed in review.

Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled: A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska.

Stuck, Hudson. London: T. Werner Laurie, 1914.
  • 1913-18 US Private Journeys round the Coast and Interior of Alaska (Hudson Stuck, “Archbishop of the Yukon”).
  • Arctic Reading: United States
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p. 77: The division of the labour of camping amongst four gave us all some leisure at night, and I found time to read through again The Cloister and the Hearth and Westward Ho! with much pleasure, quite agreeing with Sir Walter Besant’s judgment that the former is one of the best historical novels ever written. There are few more attractive roysterers in literature to me than Denys of Bergundy, with his “Courage, camarades, le diable est mort!” This matter of winter reading is a difficult one, because it is impossible to carry many books. My plan is to take two or three India-paper volumes of classics that have been read before, and renew my acquaintance with them. But reading by the light of one candle, though it sufficed our forefathers, is hard on our degenerate eyes.

“Arctic Explorers at Work and Play, 1824-1854: Six Rare broadsides recently acquired for the rare book Collection”

Hoag, Elaine. National Library of Canada Bulletin 34 (Jan-Feb 2002) –7 pages from the web.
  • Arctic Reading: General
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p. 3, Parry’s Hecla while wintering in the Arctic in December 1824: It was Parry who had recognized that the Arctic expeditions of his predecessors had often been jeopardized, not by the dangers of the journey itself, but by the long inactive winter layover, with its monotonous diet, unvaried company, restricted physical activity, lack of light and warmth, and simple boredom. In response, Parry instituted a highly successful wintering regime that included shipboard theatricals, concerts and masquerades among its many elements. Broadside advertisements were a natural adjunct to these activities.

Northern Regions: Or, A relation of Uncle Richard’s Voyages for the Discovery of a North-west Passage.

(London: J. Harris, 1825) [New York reprint published by Johnson Reprint, 1970.].
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
 Preview 

A serious account of four British expeditions intended to introduce children to the excitement and uncertainties of Arctic travel, without sparing the more gruesome aspects of exploration (death, storms, cannibalism, etc.) Good and accurate descriptions of amusements aboard, and relatively balanced accounts of the “savages.” The expeditions are Parry I, Franklin I, Parry II, and Cochrane’s overland journey to Siberia.

Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819, 20, 21, and 22. By John Franklin…with an Appendix on Various Subjects Relating to Science and Natural History [Dr. John Richardson]

Franklin, Sir John. London: John Murray, 1823.
  • 1819-22 and 1825-27 John Franklin Overland Journeys with John Richardson.
  • Arctic Reading: Great Britain
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p. 258: … I shall mention briefly, that a considerable portion of it was occupied in writing up our journals. Some newspapers and magazines, that we had received from England with our letters, were read again and again, and commented upon, at our meals; and we often exercised ourselves with conjecturing the changes that might take place in the world before we could hear from it again. The probability of our receiving letters, and the period of their arrival, were calculated to a nicety…. The Sabbath was always a day of rest with us; the woodmen were required to provide for the exigencies of that day on Saturday, and the party were dressed in their best attire. Divine service was regularly performed, and the Canadians attended, and behaved with great decorum, although they were all Roman Catholics, and but little acquainted with the language in which the prayers were read. I regretted much that we had not a French Prayer-Book, but the Lord's Prayer and Creed were always read to them in their own language.

The Voyage of the Endeavour 1768-1771.

Cook, James, Captain. Edited by J. C. Beaglehole. (Cambridge: Hakluyt Society, 1968).
  • 1768-71 British Voyage to the South Pacific (aboard Endeavour commanded by Captain James Cook).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
    Maritime Reading
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Captain Cook’s first voyage rounded Cape Horn but came no closer to Antarctica. His second voyage was marked by his complete circumnavigation of the Antarctic continent, and his pessimistic statements that no one was likely to get any closer than he did through the impenetrable ice and fog.

Antarctic Scout

Chappell, Richard Lee. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1959.
  • 1957- Operation Deep Freeze.
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Chappell was part of a program to send Boy Scouts on Antarctic expeditions, in his case to Operation Deep Freeze II when he was a winterover at Little America. Paul Siple was an earlier participant who became an important American explorer and encouraged this young man who later went to Princeton. The writing is wooden and generally sanctimonious, betraying the author’s youth. Reading is minimal, mostly confined to the Bible (p. 81), though he does find a copy of Murphy’s Oceanic Birds of South America to help his pursuit of ornithology, and he did participate in Little America’s “University of the Antarctic.” At those sessions he studied Morse code and did manage to send off a sample message. He ends with a rather fundamentalist homily based on Matt 28:20: “lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” Chappell does not appear to have published anything else.

A Visit to the South Seas, in the U.S. Ship Vincennes, During the years 1829 and 1830; with Scenes in Brazil, Peru, Manila, the Cape of Good Hope, and St. Helena.

Stewart, Charles S. Two Volumes. New York: John P. Haven, 1831.
  • 1829-30 US Circumnavigation (W.C.B. Finch aboard USS Vincennes).
  • Global Circumnavigations and Cape Horn Transits.
  • Maritime Reading
 Preview 

Stewart was in effect the missionary narrator of this somewhat odd circumnavigation in that it didn’t intend circling the globe until it was already on the Pacific Coast. He began on a different ship and then joined the round the world cruise aboard the Vincennes at Callao, Peru, on July 29th. [Note: there are variant editions of this work, with differing dates and paginations. The Google version of Vol. I does not indicate date but maybe 1832 rather than the first.

Antarctic Command

Ronne, Finne. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961.
  • 1957-58 Operation Deep Freeze I. Ellesworth Station. (Finn Ronne).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
 Preview 

Ronne’s self-justifying and self-pitying account of his disastrous command of the IGY expedition at Ellsworth Station in the Weddell Sea in 1956-58, mainly acknowledging the extreme tensions between military and civilian scientists.

Miscellaneous notes, etc. from diaries.

Orde Lees, Thomas. SPRI MS 967/3/2.
  • 1914-16 Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (Shackleton on Endurance).
  • Antarctic Reading: Expeditions
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Includes a list of books that seems to serve as something of a circulation record as well, indicating the person who had the book and in some cases gives a date of Jan 31which may have indicated a loan period. It does not include everything known to have made it to Elephant Island, such as 5 vols. of the Britannica. In fact few of the items on this list did make it beyond Dump Camp.

Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America.

Dolan, John Davis. New York: Norton, 2007.
  • Whalemen's Reading
 Preview 

An epic history of the "iron men in wooden boats" who built an industrial empire through the pursuit of whales. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," Herman Melville proclaimed, and this absorbing history demonstrates that few things can capture the sheer danger and desperation of men on the deep sea as dramatically as whaling. Eric Jay Dolin begins his vivid narrative with Captain John Smith's botched whaling expedition to the New World in 1614. He then chronicles the rise of a burgeoning industry - from its brutal struggles during the Revolutionary period to its golden age in the mid-1800s when a fleet of more than 700 ships hunted the seas and American whale oil lit the world, to its decline as the twentieth century dawned. This sweeping social and economic history provides rich and often fantastic accounts of the men themselves, who mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, scrimshawed, and recorded their experiences in journals and memoirs. Containing a wealth of naturalistic detail on whales, Leviathan is the most original and stirring history of American whaling in many decades.