A Short History of Polar Exploration
A Short History of Polar Exploration

Author: Nick Rennison

Publisher: Oldacastle Books

Published: 2014-05-01

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 1843440911

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An absorbing history, bringing explorers' tales vividly to life Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, said "Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised." Yet there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings. This compelling book tells the memorable stories of the men and women who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen, to lesser known heroes such as Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary. This history also looks at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last 200 years examining the paintings, films, and literature that they have inspired.

A Short History of Polar Exploration
A Short History of Polar Exploration

Author: Nick Rennison

Publisher: Oldcastle Books

Published: 2013-11-19

Total Pages: 135

ISBN-13: 1843440911

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According to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, one of the men who went to Antarctica with Captain Scott, 'Polar exploration is at once the cleanest and most isolated way of having a bad time that has ever been devised. ' Despite this there has never been a shortage of volunteers willing to endure the bad times in pursuit of the glory that polar exploration sometimes brings. Nick Rennison's compelling book tells the memorable stories of the men and women who have risked their lives by entering the white wastelands of the Arctic and the Antarctic, from the compelling tales of Scott, Shacklet on and Amundsen, to lesser known heroes such as Fridtjof Nansen and Robert Peary. A Short History of Polar Exploration also looks at the hold that the polar regions have often had on the imaginations of artists and writers in the last two hundred years examining the pain tings, films and literature that they have inspired.

The Spectral Arctic
The Spectral Arctic

Author: Shane McCorristine

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2018-05-01

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1787352455

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Visitors to the Arctic enter places that have been traditionally imagined as otherworldly. This strangeness fascinated audiences in nineteenth-century Britain when the idea of the heroic explorer voyaging through unmapped zones reached its zenith. The Spectral Arctic re-thinks our understanding of Arctic exploration by paying attention to the importance of dreams and ghosts in the quest for the Northwest Passage. The narratives of Arctic exploration that we are all familiar with today are just the tip of the iceberg: they disguise a great mass of mysterious and dimly lit stories beneath the surface. In contrast to oft-told tales of heroism and disaster, this book reveals the hidden stories of dreaming and haunted explorers, of frozen mummies, of rescue balloons, visits to Inuit shamans, and of the entranced female clairvoyants who travelled to the Arctic in search of John Franklin’s lost expedition. Through new readings of archival documents, exploration narratives, and fictional texts, these spectral stories reflect the complex ways that men and women actually thought about the far North in the past. This revisionist historical account allows us to make sense of current cultural and political concerns in the Canadian Arctic about the location of Franklin’s ships.

The South Pole
The South Pole

Author: Roald Amundsen

Publisher: BoD – Books on Demand

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 3861952564

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Account of the thrilling race to the south pole. With an introduction by Fridtjof Nansen.

The Ice Balloon
The Ice Balloon

Author: Alec Wilkinson

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2013-01-08

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0307741869

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In 1897, at the height of the heroic age of Arctic exploration, the visionary Swedish explorer S. A. Andrée made a revolutionary attempt to discover the North Pole by flying over it in a hydrogen balloon. Thirty-three years later, his expedition diaries and papers would be discovered on the ice. Alec Wilkinson uses the explorer’s papers and contemporary sources to tell the full story of this ambitious voyage, while also showing how the late 19th century’s spirit of exploration and scientific discovery drove over 1,000 explorers to the unforgiving Arctic landscape. Suspenseful and haunting, Wilkinson captures Andrée’s remarkable adventure and illuminates the detail, beauty, and devastating conditions of traveling and dwelling on the ice.

The Frozen Ship
The Frozen Ship

Author: Sarah Moss

Publisher:

Published: 2009-05

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781933346205

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"Polar expeditions have generated a literature with its own history and style. The Frozen Ship is a thorough and thought-provoking examination of some of the most influential, popular, and intriguing accounts of journeys into the eternal ice--from Viking settlers and Renaissance conquerors to Robert Falcon Scott's meticulous account of his own dying, and from the tales of Parry, Franklin, Nansen, Shackleton, and Byrd to the journals of little-known explorers, missionaries, and archaeologists from Europe and North America. The Frozen Ship considers the morbid fascination with expeditions that went horribly wrong and the even greater interest attached to those that were rescued at the last minute"--Page 4 of cover.

Madhouse at the End of the Earth
Madhouse at the End of the Earth

Author: Julian Sancton

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2021-05-04

Total Pages: 368

ISBN-13: 0753553473

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'An epic of survival' -- MICHAEL PALIN 'A "grade-A classic"' -- SUNDAY TIMES 'Utterly enthralling' -- GEOFF DYER, GUARDIAN 'Deeply engrossing' -- NEW YORK TIMES LISTED AS A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE TIMES, NEW STATESMAN, SUNDAY TIMES The harrowing, survival story of an early polar expedition that went terribly wrong, with the ship frozen in ice and the crew trapped inside for the entire sunless, Antarctic winter August 1897: The Belgica set sail, eager to become the first scientific expedition to reach the white wilderness of the South Pole. But the ship soon became stuck fast in the ice of the Bellinghausen sea, condemning the ship's crew to overwintering in Antarctica and months of endless polar night. In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness, their minds ravaged by the sound of dozens of rats teeming in the hold, they descended into madness. In this epic tale, Julian Sancton unfolds a story of adventure gone horribly awry. As the crew teetered on the brink, the Captain increasingly relied on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in captivity - Dr. Frederick Cook, the wild American whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance on the Belgica; and the ship's first mate, soon-to-be legendary Roald Amundsen, who later raced Captain Scott to the South Pole. Together, Cook and Amundsen would plan a last-ditch, desperate escape from the ice-one that would either etch their names into history or doom them to a terrible fate in the frozen ocean. Drawing on first-hand crew diaries and journals, and exclusive access to the ship's logbook, the result is equal parts maritime thriller and gothic horror. This is an unforgettable journey into the deep.

Trial by Ice
Trial by Ice

Author: Richard Parry

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Published: 2009-01-21

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0307492125

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“An extraordinary real-life adventure of men battling the elements and themselves, told with ice-cold precision.” –Kirkus Reviews (starred review) In the dark years following the Civil War, America’s foremost Arctic explorer, Charles Francis Hall, became a figure of national pride when he embarked on a harrowing, landmark expedition. With financial backing from Congress and the personal support of President Grant, Captain Hall and his crew boarded the Polaris, a steam schooner carefully refitted for its rigorous journey, and began their quest to be the first men to reach the North Pole. Neither the ship nor its captain would ever return. What transpired was a tragic death and whispers of murder, as well as a horrifying ordeal through the heart of an Arctic winter, when men fought starvation, madness, and each other upon the ever-shifting ice. Trial by Ice is an incredible adventure that pits men against the natural elements and their own fragile human nature. In this powerful true story of death and survival, courage and intrigue aboard a doomed ship, Richard Parry chronicles one of the most astonishing, little known tragedies at sea in American history. “ABSORBING . . . Suspense builds as Parry describes the events leading up to Hall’s ‘murder,’ then climaxes in horrifying detail.” –Publishers Weekly “RIVETING.” –Library Journal

Abandoned
Abandoned

Author: A. L. Todd

Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing

Published: 2017-01-12

Total Pages: 638

ISBN-13: 1787208222

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Alden L. Todd’s Abandoned has been called “A model account of perhaps the most ill-fated and certainly the most grimly fascinating episode in the annals of Arctic exploration....” Working extensively with primary sources—official correspondence, diaries, letters, notes by the expedition’s participants and those left at home and in the nation’s capital—Alden Todd presents an evenhanded, elegantly written account of the greatest tragedy in the history of American arctic exploration: the Greely expedition of 1881-1884. Launched as part of the United States’ participation in the first International Polar Year, the expedition sent twenty-five volunteers to what is now Ellesmere Island in the Canadian High Arctic, off the northwest coast of Greenland, commanded by Adolphus Washington Greely, a thirty-seven-year-old lieutenant in the U.S. Army’s Signal Corps. The ship sent to resupply them in the summer of 1882 was forced to turn back before reaching the station, and the men were left to endure short rations and unbroken isolation at their icy base. When the second relief ship, sent in 1883, was crushed in the ice, Greely led his men south, following a prearranged plan. The crew spent a third and increasingly more wretched winter camped at Cape Sabine. Supplies ran out, the hunting failed, and men began to die of starvation. Abandoned is a gripping account of men battling for survival as they are pitted against the elements and each other. It is also the most complete and authentic account of the controversial Greely Expedition ever published, an exemplar of the best in chronicles of polar exploration.