First published in 1874, this illustrated work by Albert Hastings Markham (1841-1918) recounts his experiences aboard the Dundee steam whaler Arctic. Markham also gives an account of the rescue of the crew of the American vessel Polaris, crushed by ice in 1872 during its attempt to reach the North Pole. The work is enhanced by details of meetings with Inuit, encounters with polar wildlife, oceanographic observations, and meteorological events. Appropriately, fellow naval officer and explorer Sherard Osborn (1822-75) wrote the introduction: he had a long interest in Arctic exploration,...

Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, a grandson of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy, was well known as a mountaineer and traveller when, in 1899, he organised an expedition to the Arctic, obtaining a steam whaling ship in Oslo which he renamed the Stella Polare. His ambition was to reach the highest possible latitude (and possibly the North Pole itself) by careful logistical arrangements, wintering on the ice in Franz Josef Land and using dog-sledges to travel further north. He also intended a scientific survey of the area in which the team passed the winter. His account of the expedition was...

Prince Luigi Amedeo of Savoy, a grandson of King Vittorio Emanuele II of Italy, was well known as a mountaineer and traveller when, in 1899, he organised an expedition to the Arctic, obtaining a steam whaling ship in Oslo which he renamed the Stella Polare. His ambition was to reach the highest possible latitude (and possibly the North Pole itself) by careful logistical arrangements, wintering on the ice in Franz Josef Land and using dog-sledges to travel further north. He also intended a scientific survey of the area in which the team passed the winter. His account of the expedition was...

This 1850 account of the history of Arctic exploration was dedicated to Lady Franklin, whose energy in spurring on expeditions in search of her husband and his two ships, by then missing for five years, was widely admired. John Shillinglaw (d.1862), a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, was able both to give a historical perspective and to describe the most recent efforts being made to discover Franklin's fate. The narrative begins with the Viking exploration and settlement of Iceland and Greenland, and possible landings in North America. While focusing on British voyages in more recent...

The German scientific writer Georg Hartwig (1813-80) produced many popular works on geographical and natural history topics, among them this book, published in English in 1869. (An American version, with additional chapters, came out in the same year.) Unusually for the period, it surveyed exploration in the Antarctic as well as the Arctic, though the coverage of the latter makes up the bulk of the book. Hartwig's intention is 'to convey solid instruction under an entertaining form', combining the history of exploration with descriptions of the polar regions explored by the mid-century,...

The Challenger Expedition of 1872 6 was conceived to examine the deep sea floor worldwide and disprove the theory of a 'dead zone' in the oceans below a certain depth. Using a modified Royal Navy ship, the expedition sailed nearly 70,000 nautical miles across the globe, collecting oceanographic data and marine specimens, and laying the foundations for the science of oceanography by later publishing fifty volumes of reports. The naturalist Henry Moseley (1844 91) recounts the voyage in this 1879 work, covering visits to many remote islands and the taking of samples at hundreds of locations....

A cavalry officer in the US Army, with training in law and medicine, Frederick Schwatka (1849-92) became interested in the lost expedition of Sir John Franklin following the search attempts led by the American explorer Charles Francis Hall. Supported by the American Geographical Society, Schwatka sailed in 1878 with five others in search of written records, believed to be deposited in cairns. A soldier turned journalist, William Henry Gilder (1838-1900) accompanied Schwatka and published this illustrated account in 1882. Their sledge journey with a party of twelve Inuit was at that time the...

After running away to sea in 1741, Henry Ellis (1721-1806) joined a privately funded expedition with the purpose of discovering the North-West Passage, a possible trade route to the East Indies. While the expedition returned to England unsuccessful in 1747, having been thwarted by hazardous ice, Ellis believed that the route was still likely to exist. The party had travelled further north than any previous expedition, and Ellis's account, first published in 1748, generated great interest. The book includes a brief history of other attempts to find the passage, a map of Hudson Bay, several...

Having joined the Royal Navy at the age of ten, Frederick William Beechey (1796-1856) had risen to the rank of lieutenant when he served under John Franklin on the 1818 British expedition to the Arctic in search of a possible route from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Two ships, the Dorothea and the Trent, were sent to find a route via the seas around Spitsbergen. A little north of 80 their progress was halted by ice. Sailing west to Greenland, the Dorothea was seriously damaged and the expedition aborted. Beechey's account remains the principal source for this voyage as neither Franklin nor...

Jane Franklin (1792-1875) became well known in the middle of the nineteenth century for her tireless campaign to discover the fate of the lost Arctic expedition led by her husband, Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). The editor of this volume, Willingham Franklin Rawnsley (1845-1927), was Sir John's great-nephew, with access to the family papers. The four sections of this work, first published in 1923, address Jane's life before her marriage in 1828; the period when her husband was posted to the Mediterranean; life in Tasmania, where Sir John served as governor; and Lady Franklin's quest to learn...