Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Series
  3. Cambridge Library Collection - Polar Exploration

This series includes accounts, by eye-witnesses and contemporaries, of early expeditions to the Arctic and the Antarctic. Huge resources were invested in such endeavours, particularly the search for the North-West Passage, which, if successful, promised enormous strategic and commercial rewards. Cartographers and scientists travelled with many of the expeditions, and their work made important contributions to earth sciences, climatology, botany and zoology. They also brought back anthropological information about the indigenous peoples of the Arctic region and the southern fringes of the American continent. The series further includes dramatic and poignant accounts of the harsh realities of working in extreme conditions and utter isolation in bygone centuries.

Refine search

Refine search

Content type:
Publication date:
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

202 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Polar Exploration

Page 5 of 11

Journal of HMS Enterprise, on the Expedition in Search of Sir John Franklin's Ships by Behring Strait, 1850–55
  • Richard Collinson
  • Edited by T. B. Collinson
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    19 January 2012
    First published in:
    1889
  • Published posthumously in 1889, this journal records the 1850–5 expedition undertaken by naval officer and navigator Sir Richard Collinson (1811–83) to attempt to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin's expedition by entering the hypothetical North-West Passage from the 'other side', via Bering Strait. Franklin, the famous Polar explorer, disappeared on an expedition to discover the Passage in 1845, and no fewer than thirty attempts were made between 1847 and 1859 to investigate what had happened to his 129-strong party. Collinson set out in command of HMS Enterprise in 1850, and his ship, which passed three successive winters in the Arctic, came closest to the place where Franklin's expedition was believed to have ended. Collinson was awarded a Gold Medal by the Royal Geographical Society in 1858 for making a significant contribution to the geographical knowledge of the area, and he was knighted in 1875.

Vitus Bering: The Discoverer of Bering Strait
  • Peter Lauridsen
  • Translated by Julius E. Olson
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    22 December 2011
    First published in:
    1889
  • Vitus Bering (1681–1741) was a Danish-born Russian navigator. He enlisted in the Russian navy and fought during the Great Northern War (1700–21) against the Swedish Empire. In 1725 he received a commission from Peter the Great to discover whether there was a land bridge between Russia and America. He sailed through what would later be called the Bering Strait, but was unable to reach America on this first attempt. He succeeded on his next voyage, later named the Great Northern Expedition, and set about mapping significant sections of North American coastline. He also charted the Arctic coast of Siberia, 'discovered' Japan from the North and became the first European to explore Alaska. Published in English translation for the American market in 1889, this sympathetic biography by the historian and geographer Peter Lauridsen (1846–1923) had originally appeared in Danish in 1885. It includes extensive notes and an index.

In the Lena Delta
  • A Narrative of the Search for Lieut-Commander De Long and his Companions, Followed by an Account of the Greely Relief Expedition and a Proposed Method of Reaching the North Pole
  • George W. Melville
  • Edited by Melville Philips
  • Published online:
    05 June 2015
    Print publication:
    15 December 2011
    First published in:
    1885
  • George W. Melville (1841–1912) was a member of an 1879 American Arctic expedition seeking a northern passage from the Bering Strait to the Atlantic. Its ship was trapped in ice for nearly two years, and was eventually crushed and sank. The crew, stranded in three small boats, were left with few provisions and little hope of rescue. Melville was the only boat commander to bring his men to safety, assuming leadership of the survivors after landing in Siberia in 1881. He returned to search for other survivors, trekking over a thousand miles, but found only the bodies of his former companions in a frozen campsite, from which, however, he recovered the expedition's records. This account also includes details of Melville's role in the Greely Relief Expedition of 1884, from which he returned shortly before the book's British publication in 1885, and a detailed proposal for reaching the North Pole.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and round the World
  • Being Personal Narratives of Attempts to Reach the North and South Poles
  • Volume 1
  • Robert McCormick
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    08 May 2014
    First published in:
    1884
  • Published in 1884 and illustrated with over 100 of his own drawings and maps, this two-volume work by the doctor and naturalist Robert McCormick (1800–90) provides an account of his voyages in the Arctic with William Parry and in the Antarctic with James Clark Ross, noting also his part in the search for Sir John Franklin. Incorporating a very detailed autobiography, McCormick's work also provides many details relating to natural history and geology. Volume 1 is mainly devoted to his Antarctic voyage (1839–43), during which he also visited St Helena, the Kerguelen Islands, Australia, New Zealand, the Falkland Islands and Tierra del Fuego. During three attempts to reach the South Pole the expedition explored the Ross Sea, described the ice barrier, and raised the British flag to claim possession. The volume ends with the abortive attempt in 1827 to reach the North Pole via Spitsbergen.

Proceedings of the Proteus Court of Inquiry on the Greely Relief Expedition of 1883
  • United States Congress
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    05 July 2012
    First published in:
    1884
  • In 1881, Adolphus Greely led a US Arctic expedition to gather meteorological, astronomical and magnetic data. The expedition was poorly supported by the US Army, neither Greely nor his men had experience of Arctic conditions, and their ship, the Proteus, sailed home without them once they landed in Greenland. An inadequately planned relief mission failed to reach them in 1882, and a second expedition in 1883, including the Proteus, also failed to locate the men or to land supplies. In 1884, Congress investigated the earlier attempts with a view to launching a further rescue. This report includes an inquiry into the inadequate earlier missions, details of Greely's original resources, and suggestions for a plan of approach for the rescue, including how to find the men and where they were likely to be. When found in 1884, only seven of the original team of twenty-five were still alive.

American Explorations in the Ice Zones
  • Joseph Everett Nourse
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    07 June 2012
    First published in:
    1884
  • In 1879, the steamer Jeannette went missing near Alaska. It had been sent by the American Navy in search of a missing Swedish expedition. Having become trapped in ice, the ship was not heard from for almost two years, when her remaining crew finally reached safety. By this time, any American expedition that focused its efforts further north than the sixtieth parallel was usually considered to be within the Arctic, and these invariably perilous expeditions were often launched in search of lost ships. In 1884, Joseph Everett Nourse (1819–89) published details of all the major American expeditions, including the efforts to rescue the Jeannette, Hayes's attempt to prove the existence of the Open Polar Sea, and Schwatka's 3,000-mile sledge journey across the tundra. Written to make the journals of explorers more accessible to young readers, Nourse's comprehensive text is still of relevance to students of American maritime history.

Voyages of Discovery in the Arctic and Antarctic Seas, and round the World
  • Being Personal Narratives of Attempts to Reach the North and South Poles
  • Volume 2
  • Robert McCormick
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    08 May 2014
    First published in:
    1884
  • Published in 1884 and illustrated with over 100 of his own drawings and maps, this two-volume work by the doctor and naturalist Robert McCormick (1800–90) provides an account of his voyages in the Arctic with William Parry and in the Antarctic with James Clark Ross, noting also his part in the search for Sir John Franklin. Incorporating a very detailed autobiography, McCormick's work also provides many details relating to natural history and geology. Volume 2 describes his role in the 1852–4 mission to find Franklin in the Arctic, including an open boat voyage up the Wellington Channel. The appendices provide notes on maintaining health in polar climes. This is followed by McCormick's autobiography, tracing his struggles to gain promotion in his naval career. Copies of correspondence relating to the Franklin search reveal his battle to have his ideas accepted by the Admiralty.

Report of Board of Officers to Consider an Expedition for the Relief of Lieut. Greely and Party
  • United States Board of Officers
  • Published online:
    05 February 2015
    Print publication:
    06 November 2014
    First published in:
    1884
  • In 1881, Adolphus Greely led a US Arctic expedition to gather meteorological, astronomical and magnetic data. It was poorly supported by the US Army, neither Greely nor his men had experience of Arctic conditions, and their ship, the Proteus, sailed home once they had landed in Greenland. An inadequately planned relief mission failed to reach them in 1882, and a second expedition in 1883, including the Proteus (which was crushed by ice), also failed to locate the men or to land sufficient supplies. This official report was published in 1884, and proposes a further rescue mission, much more carefully planned and equipped. It includes, as an appendix, detailed information about Arctic conditions and means of survival from the British naval explorers George Nares and Albert H. Markham. When eventually found, only seven of Greely's original team of twenty-five were still alive. Other accounts of the expeditions are also reissued in this series.

The Voyage of the Jeannette
  • The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, Lieutenant-Commander U.S.N., and Commander of the Polar Expedition of 1879–1881
  • Volume 1
  • George Washington De Long
  • Edited by Emma De Long
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    07 June 2012
    First published in:
    1883
  • George W. De Long (1844–81) was a US Navy officer who set out to find a new route to the North Pole via the Bering Strait. During his voyage, which left San Francisco in 1879, he claimed the De Long Islands for the USA. But when his vessel, the Jeannette, sank, he and his crew abandoned ship, and he eventually died of starvation in Siberia. His doomed expedition is documented in these two volumes, compiled by his wife Emma from his journals and the testimony of the mission's survivors. First published in 1883, Volume 1 begins by sketching De Long's early years and his preparations for the expedition. The remaining chapters record the crew's experiences in the treacherous Arctic, and their brave but vain attempts to save the Jeannette. Providing a vivid account of nineteenth-century Polar exploration, it remains of great interest to scholars of geography and maritime studies.

The Voyage of the Jeannette
  • The Ship and Ice Journals of George W. De Long, Lieutenant-Commander U.S.N., and Commander of the Polar Expedition of 1879–1881
  • Volume 2
  • George Washington De Long
  • Edited by Emma De Long
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    07 June 2012
    First published in:
    1883
  • George W. De Long (1844–81) was a US Navy officer who set out to find a new route to the North Pole via the Bering Strait. During his voyage, which left San Francisco in 1879, he claimed the De Long Islands for the USA. But when his vessel, the Jeannette, sank, the crew abandoned ship, and he eventually died of starvation in Siberia. Compiled by his wife from his journals and the testimony of the survivors, these two volumes document De Long's doomed expedition. First published in 1883, Volume 2 records the Jeannette's final wreckage, and the crew's continuation of their perilous mission in smaller boats. It concludes with the discovery of De Long's records, and later his remains, by surviving crew member George Melville. Providing a vivid account of nineteenth-century Polar exploration, it remains of great interest to scholars of geography and maritime studies.

Schwatka's Search
  • Sledging in the Arctic in Quest of the Franklin Records
  • William Henry Gilder
  • Published online:
    05 October 2014
    Print publication:
    17 April 2014
    First published in:
    1882
  • 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 longest on record. No documents were found, but the expedition did discover artefacts and graves of Franklin's men. Schwatka concluded that no scientific results from Franklin existed. In his adoption of Inuit techniques for safe travel in the Arctic, he preceded Vilhjalmur Stefansson by many decades.

The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe
  • With a Historical Review of Previous Journeys along the North Coast of the Old World
  • Volume 1
  • Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
  • Translated by Alexander Leslie
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    10 May 2012
    First published in:
    1881
  • The Finnish geologist and Arctic explorer A. E. Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) spent much of his life in exile in Sweden, where he was made a baron. He served as Superintendent of the Mineralogical Department of the Swedish Royal Museum, and later became a Member of the Swedish Academy. Following a number of expeditions during the 1860s, he concluded that the North Pole could not be reached by ship, and in 1872 he tried unsuccessfully to reach it overland. A great historian of cartography, he amassed a huge collection of maps, now included in UNESCO's 'Memory of the World' Register. This two-volume work, published in Swedish in 1881, describes his most famous voyage, the first crossing of the North-East Passage. Volume 1 includes details of the flora, fauna, people and geology encountered on the journey from Tromso to the Bering Strait, along with a review of previous exploration in the region.

Als Eskimo unter den Eskimos
  • Eine Schilderung der Erlebnisse der Schwatka'schen Franklin-Aufsuchungs-Expedition in den Jahren 1878–80
  • Heinrich W. Klutschak
  • Published online:
    05 November 2015
    Print publication:
    14 June 2012
    First published in:
    1881
  • With this 1881 publication, Heinrich Klutschak (1847–90), a German native of Prague, produced one of the first comprehensive accounts of Inuit life. In the years 1878–80 the artist and writer was part of an expedition, led by the American soldier Frederick Schwatka, which travelled in the Canadian Arctic. This undertaking was but one of many that sought to discover what had happened during the last expedition of the British explorer Sir John Franklin in the 1840s. As the title of the work indicates, Klutschak and his fellow expedition members attempted to live as fully as possible in the manner of the Inuit and in close proximity to them. Although Klutschak dwells on the antipathy between some of the Inuit bands, the general tone of the book is one of respect for their survival skills and way of life.

The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe
  • With a Historical Review of Previous Journeys along the North Coast of the Old World
  • Volume 2
  • Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
  • Translated by Alexander Leslie
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    10 May 2012
    First published in:
    1881
  • The Finnish geologist and Arctic explorer A. E. Nordenskiöld (1832–1901) spent much of his life in exile in Sweden, where he was made a baron. He served as Superintendent of the Mineralogical Department of the Swedish Royal Museum, and later became a Member of the Swedish Academy. Following a number of expeditions during the 1860s, he concluded that the North Pole could not be reached by ship, and in 1872 he tried unsuccessfully to reach it overland. A great historian of cartography, he amassed a huge collection of maps, now included in UNESCO's 'Memory of the World' Register. This two-volume work, published in Swedish in 1881, describes his most famous voyage, the first crossing of the North-East Passage. Volume 2 follows the expedition from the Bering Strait to Yokohama in Japan, and the return journey to Sweden, through the India Ocean, the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean, in 1879.

Lieut. John Irving, R.N., of H.M.S. Terror, in Sir John Franklin's Last Expedition to the Arctic Regions
  • A Memorial Sketch with Letters
  • Benjamin Bell
  • Published online:
    05 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1881
  • John Irving (1815–1847?) was a lieutenant on board H.M.S. Terror during Sir John Franklin's fateful expedition, and had the melancholy distinction of being the first identifiable body to be found by a subsequent search party - that of the US officer Frederick Schwatka - in 1878. Irving was identified by a silver medal, won for mathematics in 1830. His remains were brought back to Britain and reburied in his home town, Edinburgh, and at the request of Irving's father this 'memorial sketch', including some of the young lieutenant's letters to his family, was published in 1881 by Benjamin Bell (1810–83), great-grandfather of the surgeon Joseph Bell, Conan Doyle's model for Sherlock Holmes. As well as the touching memoir, the work includes details of the various search and rescue attempts, and a reconstructed chronology by Clements Markham of the Franklin expedition up to its disastrous end.

Fur-Clad Adventurers
  • Or, Travels in Skin-Canoes, on Dog-Sledges, on Reindeer, and on Snow-Shoes, through Alaska, Kamchatka, and Eastern Siberia
  • Zacariah Atwell Mudge
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    14 June 2012
    First published in:
    1880
  • Z. A. Mudge (1813–88) was an American pastor, author and Arctic exploration enthusiast. After the success of his popular books North Pole Voyages and Arctic Heroes, he wrote this book on the Western Union Telegraph Expedition. In the mid-nineteenth century the Western Union Telegraph Company decided to create a telegraph line that would run from San Francisco, California to Moscow, Russia. The line was to run through Alaska and Siberia, and although the project was abandoned in 1867, a large amount of Arctic exploration had been achieved in the meantime. This book, first published in 1880, is Mudge's compilation of the accounts of some of the explorers who were involved in different stages of the expedition, including the naturalist W. H. Dall during his exploration in Alaska. Mudge goes on to include the Siberian experiences of George Kennan and W. H. Bush (whose own account is also reissued in this series).

Die Amerikanische Nordpol-Expedition
  • Emil Bessels
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    22 December 2011
    First published in:
    1879
  • The German surgeon and explorer Emil Bessels (1847–88) was head of the scientific team on the American-sponsored Polaris Expedition, which in 1871–3 made an unsuccessful attempt to reach the North Pole. Some of the crew spent months adrift on an ice floe and others were marooned in Greenland. Astonishingly, they survived, but much of the expedition's scientific research remained unpublished as a result of financial wrangling. This 1879 publication is a popular account of the journey, with a substantial scientific appendix based on the expedition papers and additional data shared with Bessels by Sir George Nares. It describes the expedition's landfalls from Newfoundland to Greenland, and experiences, including temperatures so low that mercury froze, hunting for polar bears and seals for food, and the help provided by the local Inuit, whose language, traditions and burial customs Bessels outlines. The book also contains over eighty illustrations, mostly woodcuts.

An Account of the Petrological, Botanical, and Zoological Collection Made in Kerguelen's Land and Rodriguez during the Transit of Venus Expeditions 1874–75
  • Alfred Edwin Eaton
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    14 June 2012
    First published in:
    1879
  • The Kerguelen Islands, known also as the Desolation Islands, lie in the extreme south of the Indian Ocean. By the late nineteenth century they were still relatively unexplored, but they represented a fascinating puzzle: although the Islands were four thousand miles away from South America, they shared the same species of flora. Rodrigues, an island off the coast of Madagascar, was also a point of increasing interest among naturalists. While most archipelagic islands then discovered were volcanic, explorers noted that the caves of Rodrigues were formed of limestone, and that most local species were not indigenous. Like the Kerguelen Islands, they provided some of the first clear evidence that modern sea-levels were much altered from those of prehistory. Naturalists visited both locations as part of the expeditions to study the transit of Venus in 1874. Originally published in 1879, this collection of essays is a comprehensive catalogue of their findings.

The Two Voyages of the Pandora
  • In 1875 and 1876
  • Allen Young
  • Published online:
    05 May 2013
    Print publication:
    03 May 2012
    First published in:
    1879
  • Sir Allen Young (1827–1915), was a merchant navy officer and experienced polar explorer. He took part in several expeditions before those of the Pandora including as navigator to McClintock on the Fox to discover the fate of Sir John Franklin. He was also in command of the Fox on the 1860 North Atlantic Telegraph Expedition to assess the practicality of a cable route between Europe and America across the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland. In 1875 and 1876 he led two expeditions in the Canadian Arctic on the steam yacht Pandora. The first, the British North-West Passage Expedition, was an attempt to reach the magnetic pole via Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and to navigate the North-West Passage in one season. The second was a further attempt on the North-West Passage, but also to deliver dispatches to George Nares' Arctic expedition. These compelling accounts were first published together in 1879.

Narrative of the Second Arctic Expedition Made by Charles F. Hall
  • His Voyage to Repulse Bay, Sledge Journeys to the Straits of Fury and Hecla and to King William's Land, and Residence among the Eskimos during the Years 1864–69
  • Charles Francis Hall
  • Edited by J. E. Nourse
  • Published online:
    18 December 2014
    Print publication:
    22 May 2014
    First published in:
    1879
  • The American explorer Charles Francis Hall (1821–71) made two voyages to the Arctic to determine the fate of Sir John Franklin's lost expedition. While there, he lived with Inuit, learning their language and adopting their way of life. Edited after his death and published in 1879, this account of his second expedition, from 1864 to 1869, brings the conditions he endured vividly to life. Two punishing sledge journeys to King William Island revealed evidence of Franklin's encampment there, but also the stark fact that rumours of survivors were unfounded. The work, which contains a number of fine engravings and maps, also includes appendices presenting Hall's detailed scientific observations and notes of his conversations with the Inuit, which disclosed evidence of cannibalism among Franklin's crew. Based on his earlier expedition, Hall's Life with the Esquimaux (1864) is also reissued in this series.

Page 5 of 11