Antarctic exploration

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Antarctic exploration

Highlights from our new online Antarctic list follow.

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1.

AMUNDSEN, Roald.

Sydpolen…

Two volumes, octavo; many photographic illustrations, eight maps at the end (three folding and one double-page); original pictorial cloth, in very fine condition. Kristiania, Jacob Dybwads Forlag, 1912.

The South Pole: in very fine condition

First edition in the original Norwegian; very scarce. a superb copy, with the pictorial bindings in especially bright condition. This is the commander’s narrative of this most important expedition, the first attainment of the South Pole in competition with Scott.

Originally intending a North Polar expedition in the Fram, borrowed from Fridtjof Nansen, Amundsen changed plans at the last minute and set out to be the first to reach the Pole. Nonetheless, the expedition was well organised, and was favoured by the weather, which enabled the Amundsen party to cover 1860 miles in just 99 days. Racing against Scott’s party, Amundsen and his party reached the Pole in December 1911, some 34 days before Scott. “Amundsen’s modest account of his extraordinary South Pole exploit is a classic in the exploration literature” (Rosove).

This was the only substantial contemporary account of the expedition (the one other first-hand account was published in English in 1936 by Helmer Hanssen). $2100 Rosove, 8.A2; Spence, 14.

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2.

BORCHGREVINK, Carstens Egeberg.

First on the Antarctic Continent…

Octavo, with photogravure portrait frontispiece, three coloured maps (folding), 18 plates and numerous photographic illustrations; an excellent copy in the original gilt and silver decorated pictorial cloth, top edge gilt and others uncut. London, George Newnes, 1901.

The Southern Cross expedition: first edition, first issue

The very scarce first issue of the first edition: a secondary red cloth binding was issued in the same year. The Norwegian-born Borchgrevink migrated to Australia aged 24 years.

He was a member of Henrik Bull’s Norwegian expedition on the Antarctic, which completed the first confirmed landing on the Antarctic continental mainland in 1895.

On his return, Borchgrevink began planning for an expedition to reach both the Magnetic and South Poles. He travelled to England to raise sponsorship and eventually convinced the publisher Sir George Newnes to back the project, with his purchase and refit of the Southern Cross. Consequently, Borchgrevink and a party of nine other men and 75 sledge dogs were the first to make winter camp on the Antarctic mainland. The inhospitable conditions prevented the expedition achieving their goals, however they did successfully complete the first sledging journey across the Ross Ice Shelf and reached a new furthest south, exceeding Ross’s earlier benchmark set in 1840. By proving that a party could winter safely on the ice, they laid the groundwork for the Antarctic expeditions which followed.

The Southern Cross expedition could claim a number of “firsts” in Antarctic exploration, including having been the first to establish a base to winter over on the continent. Louis Bernacchi and Will Colbeck were amongst the expedition members, one of whom, Nikolai Hanson, died, and was the first person to be buried on Antarctica. Rosove calls it “one of the most important in the Antarctic bibliography”. $3850 Renard, 152; Rosove 45.A1.a ‘Uncommon’; Spence 152; Taurus 24.

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[COOK: SECOND VOYAGE] COOK, Captain James.

3.

A Voyage towards the South Pole, and Round the World, Performed in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Adventure…

Two volumes, quarto, with frontispiece portrait and 63 engraved charts, portraits and plates; contemporary marbled calf. London, W. Strahan, and T. Cadell, 1777.

Cook’s great second voyage: the first crossing of the Antarctic circle

First edition of the official account of Cook’s great second voyage and the first crossing of the Antarctic circle, ‘arguably the greatest, most perfect, of all seaborne voyages of exploration. In his three years away he disposed of the theory of a great southern continent, reached closer to the South Pole than any other man, and touched on a multitude of lands - New Zealand and Tahiti again, and for the first time Easter Island, the Marquesas, the New Hebrides and New Caledonia’ (Marshall & Williams, p. 276). This was historically the most important of Cook’s three voyages, crossing the Antarctic circle when, early in the voyage, Cook cruised as far south as possible, round the edge of the Antarctic ice. In the Pacific, he visited New Zealand again, and either discovered or revisited many of the islands, including New Caledonia, Palmerston and Norfolk Islands, Easter Island, the Marquesas, New Hebrides, Tonga, the South Sandwich Islands and South Georgia.

Between February and May 1773, the two ships separated, and Furneaux, commander of the Adventure, supplied Cook with the narrative of his experiences in the Adventure printed here: they called at Adventure Bay in Van Diemen’s Land, and sailed up the

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east coast “intending to coast it up along shore, till we should fall in with the land seen

by Captain Cook, and discover whether Van Diemen’s Land joins with New Holland”.

Before they stood away for New Zealand, Furneaux had come to the opinion that “there is no strait between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land, but a very deep bay…”.

Disappointed with John Hawkesworth’s rendering of his first voyage in An Account of the Voyages undertaken… for Making Discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere (1773), Cook was determined that the second would not be similarly treated: although he had the editorial help of Dr John Douglas this ‘is certainly Cook’s book. There were to be no more Hawkesworths. “The Journal of my late voyage”, writes Cook to his friend Commodore Wilson at Great Ayton, “will be published in the course of next winter, and I am to have the sole advantage of sale. It will want those flourishes which Dr Hawkesworth gave the other, but it will be illustrated and ornamented with about sixty copper plates, which I am of opinion, will exceed every thing that has been done in a work of this kind… As to the Journal, it must speak for itself. I can only say that it is my own narrative, and as it was written during the voyage” …’ (Beaglehole).

The two resulting quarto volumes, with their dramatic illustrations after William Hodges, ‘would have given pleasure to any author’, but they were never seen by Cook, who had embarked on his fatal last voyage by the time they appeared. The engravings anticipated

by Cook are indeed superb; Hodges’ presence as official artist on the voyage resulted also in a famous series of oil-paintings. $12,000 Beaglehole, II, pp. cxliii-cxlvii; Beddie, 1216; Hill, 358; Holmes, 24; O’Reilly-Reitman, 390; Printing and the Mind of Man, 223; Renard, 369; Spence, 314.

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[COOK: SECOND VOYAGE] [MARRA, John].

4.

Journal of the Resolution’s Voyage, In 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775.

Octavo, folding frontispiece map and five plates, leaf D2 a cancel as usual; in later polished light tan calf. London, F. Newbery, 1775.

The first account, and first landscape view, of the Antarctic

First edition, the earliest account of any Antarctic exploration. This is the first full account of Cook’s second voyage to have been published, a surreptitious narrative that preceded the official account by some eighteen months. The second voyage marked the first crossing of the Antarctic Circle, and John Marra’s book thus contains the earliest firsthand account of the Antarctic regions, while the engravings include the earliest Antarctic landscape. Thirty-eight pages of text deal with the Antarctic visit, and the main map shows the passage of Cook’s two ships to the high southern latitudes. Marra, a recidivist would-be deserter under Cook, would reappear in history as a First Fleeter, failing again in an attempt to desert when he went bush for three days in Port Jackson in 1789.

Although Marra was aboard the Resolution on the Cook voyage, he also gives an account of the voyage of the Adventure during the period when the two ships were separated, including mention of the time the Adventure spent on the Tasmanian coast. ‘A rare work… it contains details of many events not recorded in the official account, and a preface recording the causes which led Banks and his staff to withdraw from the expedition at the last moment. Accordingly it is a vital second voyage item…’ (Davidson).

Although published anonymously, this is known to have been the work of John Marra, a Cook regular who was also to be an Australian First Fleeter. As early as September 1775 Cook was aware of the authorship: he had asked the gunner Anderson whether he had written the journal, and Anderson had convinced Marra to come forward. Amazingly, Johann Forster, the controversial naturalist of the second voyage, assisted in getting the book ready for the press (see Kroepelien, 809).

Marra (sometimes Mara) was an Irish sailor

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who had first sailed with Cook on the last leg of the Endeavour voyage, joining the crew in Batavia. He twice attempted to jump ship during the second voyage, the second time swimming desperately for shore as the Resolution left Tahiti. This latter unsuccessful attempt at desertion was only lightly punished by Cook, who mused in his journal that any man without ‘friends or connections to confine him to any part of the world’ could not ‘spend his days better than at one of those isles where he can injoy all the necessaries and some of the luxuries of life in ease and Plenty.’ (Beaglehole, Journals, II, p. 404). Although Marra protested that he foresaw no career for himself in the Navy, he would go on to be a gunner’s mate on HMS Sirius, flagship of the First Fleet. He does not appear to have mended his ways, and is reported as having been ‘lost in the bush for three days on the north shore of Port Jackson in November 1789…’ (Keith Vincent Smith, Tupaia’s Sketchbook). $11,000 Beaglehole, II, pp. cliii-clv; Beddie, 1270; Davidson, A Book Collector’s Notes, p. 60; Hill, 1087; Holmes, 16; Kroepelien, 809; O’Reilly-Reitman, 379; Rosove, 214.A1.a; Spence, 758.

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[COOK: SECOND VOYAGE] WALES, William and William BAYLY. 5.

Original Astronomical Observations made in the course of a Voyage towards the South Pole…

Quarto, with a double-page plate, two folding plates and a folding map; attractively bound in full calf, spine ornately gilt to a period design. London, Printed by W. and A. Strahan; and sold by J. Nourse. J. Mount and T. Page. Booksellers to the said Board, 1777.

Rare and ‘the true appendix to Cook’

Very rare: ‘the true appendix to Cook’ (Beaglehole), this publishes the official astronomical results of Cook’s second voyage. Probably produced in relatively small numbers because of its scientific nature, the book is ‘as important as it is rare… I have not noted a copy offered for sale in recent years and should a copy become available it would certainly arouse great competition between collectors’ (Davidson). As the introduction makes clear, the work was commissioned by the Board of Longitude, who undertook to send two representatives on Cook’s second voyage, to accurately record their observations and, in the process, to test some recent innovations such as Shelton’s astronomical clock and the two chronometers by Larcum Kendall and John Arnold, made on the principles of John Harrison. The work includes a fine double-page engraving of meteorological phenomena after the expedition’s official artist, William Hodges.

The text was edited by Wales because Bayly had already departed on the third voyage in the Discovery in 1776. As a publication resulting from Cook’s second voyage, this is significant for the history of discovery in the Antarctic: as Rosove notes, ‘Its particular interest lies in its first-ever measurements from the far south (including south of the Antarctic Circle), its connection with the rapidly evolving science of longitude determination and its association with James Cook…’.

The long introduction is by Wales and in it he attacks Dalrymple and the other proponents of the Great Southern Continent theory – ‘the notion which some persons have got concerning the necessity of a counterpoise, is so very unphilosophical, that I am much surprised how so many ingenious gentlemen have happened to adopt it’. Wales’s own experiences on the voyage are said to have partially inspired Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. $44,000 Beddie, 1287; Davidson, A Book Collector’s Notes, p.62; Hocken, p.17; Holmes, 26; Kroepelien, 1336; not in the catalogue of the Hill collection; O’Reilly-Reitman, 3999; Rosove, 342.A1; Sabin, 101030.

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DUMONT D’URVILLE, Jules Sébastien César.

6.

Autograph letter signed to Mr. Chauvin…

Single sheet of laid paper, 207 x 260 mm., folded vertically to form a letter, written in a small and neat hand to first page and addressed – but not stamped – to the last, old folds; excellent. no place, no date but circa 1832.

Dumont d’Urville presents his new work to a scientific opinion-maker

A significant letter in which the great Pacific and Antarctic explorer Dumont d’Urville presents the first parts of his official account of his first voyage to the natural historian F.J. Chauvin of Caen, active in botanical studies in the mid-nineteenth century. Chauvin’s herbarium is still held at the Université de Caen, and he is remembered by several plants named in his honour.

In the letter, Dumont d’Urville sends Chauvin the “first two parts” of his voyage account, in the hope that they will be of interest. It may be that he was sending the first parts of the historical narrative of the voyage, first published in 1830, but given Chauvin’s botanical studies, it is probably fair to assume that he was being sent the two parts of the Botanie volume, edited by Lesson & Richard (I. Essai d’une Flore de la Nouvelle Zelande.

II. Sertum Astrolabianum, Paris, 1832-4). Only as a postscript to the letter does Dumont d’Urville remember to offer his regards to Chauvin’s wife and little girl.

Dumont d’Urville had sailed on the Astrolabe (Duperrey’s old ship the Coquille, renamed in honour of La Pérouse) from Toulon in April 1826. He was instructed to explore the principal island groups in the South Pacific, completing the work of the Duperrey voyage, on which the commander himself had been a naturalist. Because of his great interest in natural history, huge amounts of scientific data and specimens were collected, described and illustrated in sumptuous folio atlases. The expedition stopped at the Cape of Good Hope, passed through Bass Strait visiting Port Phillip, and arrived at Sydney on 1 December 1828.

Extensive visits were made to both Sydney and Parramatta, where Dumont d’Urville visited Samuel Marsden; the expedition sailed for New Zealand in January 1827, explored Tasman Bay, found a pass between an island in Cook Strait and the northern shore of South Island (the island consequently named D’Urville and the strait French Strait) and worked up the coast of North Island, completing the ‘most comprehensive exploration of the islands since Cook’s death’. They made Tonga in April 1827, explored the Fiji Archipelago, New Britain and New Guinea. In November, after a stop at Amboina, they coasted along the north-west coast of Australia and reached Tasmania. In 1828 they continued to Vanikoro in search of traces of La Pérouse, and stopped at Guam in the Marianas, before returning via the Cape of Good Hope, reaching Marseille on 25 March 1829. $4500

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[KERGUELEN] PAGES, Pierre-Marie François de.

7.

Manuscript letter to his patron Marcassus de Puymaurin, written on the eve of the Kerguelen voyage.

Closely written two-page letter, 212 x 167 mm., address panel with red wax seal intact; old folds. Paris, 26 March 1772.

Preparing to search for the Terra Australis

Intriguing personal letter by Pierre-Marie François de Pagès, the naval officer who sailed with Kerguelen in hopes of founding a French colony on what Kerguelen had said was an important harbour on the great Southern Continent.

The letter is addressed to the Baron Nicolas Joseph Marcassus de Puymaurin (17181791), an important political figure in Toulouse. At the time of writing Pagès (17481793) was in Paris, recovering from his long voyage through America and around the world, and the letter openly discusses his meetings with influential political figures in Paris including the Archbishop of Toulouse (Étienne Charles de Loménie de Brienne, who would go on to be the finance minister of Louis XVI) and the Minister of the Marine (Pierre Étienne Bourgeois de Boynes). This is significant because it was de Boynes who would appoint him to the Kerguelen voyage; which is why, Pagès continues, he has been summoned to the Naval base in Brest, to help in its outfitting. In the letter he also discusses a hoped-for publication based on his travels, the work which was ultimately published as Voyages autour du monde (1782), a rare book today.

Pagès did of course sail on the disastrous second voyage of Kerguelen, an expensive failure which brought to an end, at last, the long-held French belief in “Gonneville land”, a mythical continent based on the accidental southern discoveries of the French sailor De Gonneville at the beginning of the sixteenth century (Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific, pp. 196-249). Pagès was no admirer of Kerguelen, and would later be an important and highly critical witness at his former commander’s court-martial regarding the dismasting of their vessel during a storm. $8500

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[KERGUELEN] PAGES, Pierre-Marie François de.

7.

Voyages autour du monde, et vers les deux Pôles par terre et par mer, pendant les années 1767… 1776…

Two volumes, octavo, with ten folding maps and plates; a fine copy in contemporary French marbled calf gilt. Paris, chez Moutard, 1782.

The end of the French dreams of settling the west coast of Australia

First edition: the rare original account of Pagès’s considerable travelling, of most interest for the second volume which recounts his voyage in the Indian Ocean in search of a Southern Continent as part of the second Kerguelen expedition of 1773-74.

Pagès (1748-1793) was born in Toulouse and had an incredible career in the French navy, including several years spent travelling in Texas and Mexico (his account is considered one of the more important early works on Texas particularly, and indeed the English translation of 1791 is thought to be the oldest description of the Lone Star State in an English-language book). After returning to France via the Far East he was appointed to the second Kerguelen expedition, after which debacle he joined another expedition sailing towards the North Pole in 1776. A veteran of the American Revolutionary War he “retired from the navy in 1782 and, returning to Saint-Domingue, settled on an estate belonging to his wife, a creole. His final years were devoted to scientific research, and at the time of his death he had in preparation a number of important works on America…

He was unfortunately murdered during the insurrection of the slaves in 1793. The veracity of some or all of his journeys has been regarded by bibliographers with suspicion, but, needless to say, his Voyage autour du Monde made very popular reading” (Howgego).

A large part of the second volume tells the tale of the disastrous second voyage of Kerguelen, from the perspective of a highly critical junior officer. In fact, Pagès was to be an important witness in the subsequent court-martial of the commander for the events surrounding the dismasting of the Rolland during a storm, with the result that Kerguelen was dismissed from the service and imprisoned for four years (although he later rehabilitated his career with service in the American Revolutionary War). The second volume also describes Pagès’s experiences on a whaling voyage north of Spitsbergen in 1776, which includes much information on whaling and the natural history of the whale.

Kerguelen’s voyages finally proved to the French what Cook had already generally demonstrated - that the southern continent was a fiction - but more importantly, their disastrous result ensured that promotion in the French navy was henceforth based on merit rather than breeding. ‘La Pérouse may not have been a well-connected courtier, but he was honest and capable: that he was given the opportunity to lead the most comprehensive French expedition of the eighteenth century was a direct result of the Kerguelen episode…’ (Dunmore, French Explorers in the Pacific, p. 249). $7750 Hill, 1285 (English edition only); Spence, 887.

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8.

MAWSON, Sir Douglas (ed.).

Australasian Antarctic Expedition 1911-14: Scientific Reports. Series A, Part 1 of Series C; [together with] BANZ Antarctic Research Expedition 1929-1931: Scientific Reports. Series A, B and C.

Five volumes in 26 parts, quarto; [and] fourteen volumes in 63 parts, quarto, with photographic plates, charts and maps throughout; very good, clean sets in original grey printed wrappers. Sydney & Adelaide, Government Printer; Mawson Institute, Adelaide, 1918-1943; 1937-1976.

Mawson’s scientific reports, published over fifty years

First editions of these voluminous and expensively produced reports. The complete set of the “A” series of official scientific reports from the Australian Antarctic Expedition 191114 (and the first part of Series C), and a complete run of the British Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE) 1929-31 edited by Sir Douglas Mawson; in fine condition.

Two other series of reports from the first expedition were published and the full set of reports issued from 1916 to 1947 comprised altogether ninety-one separate publications grouped into three series, made up of twenty two volumes. The reports were handsome publications, with photographs and charts of high quality. This fine set of Series “A” comprises the expedition’s work on Geography, Geology, and Glaciology. Series “B” covered Meteorology, Aural Observations, Wireless Observations, Magnetics, Tides; and Series “C” Zoology, Botany, Bacteriology. The reports from the second expedition comprise: Series A [Geographical Report, Geology, Hydrology & Magnetism] 10 parts in 4 volumes.

Series B [Biology including Fishes, Birds, Invertebrates & Plants] comprises 51 parts in 10 volumes. Volume 1 in Series A, published in 1963, is the lengthy ‘Geographical Report based on the Mawson Papers’ by A. Grenfell Price (xviii, 241 pages with 57 plates and 5 maps plus a frontispiece portrait, 7 folding maps and the full list of BANZARE reports printed on the inside of both covers).

“The work emanating from the expedition ranks it as one of the great scientific expeditions of the heroic era” [Rosove, p. 252]. $3650 Conrad, p. 208. For entire series: Rosove, 218; Spence, 74; Taurus, 103.

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9.

ROSS, Captain Sir James Clark.

A Voyage of Discovery and Research…

Octavo, two volumes, with a total of eight lithographic plates (including frontispieces), eight maps (three folding), and chapter titles with attractive steel-engraved vignettes after sketches

by Hooker; original dark blue-green grained cloth, ship vignette in gilt on front covers and a capstan design in blind on rear covers. London, John Murray, 1847.

“One of the most important works in the history of Antarctic exploration”

First edition. Ross’s account of his two voyages in the Erebus and Terror is ‘one of the most important works in the history of Antarctic exploration’ (Hill). In the course of the expedition Ross reached the highest latitude yet attained, determined the position of the Magnetic Pole and travelled within 160 miles of it. Ross was accompanied by the eminent botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker who contributed significantly to the study of Australian flora and later became a loyal friend of Charles Darwin; Hooker contributed many illustrations to the present volume. Of special interest is a large and dramatic folding lithograph of the Antarctic ice shelf, executed with a sense of scale dwarfing the vessels Erebus and Terror. This wonderful plate is followed by a large and finely engraved folding chart of the ice shelf marked with the surveys of Ross’ expedition and the United States Exploring expedition under Captain Wilkes.

The Antarctic bibliographer Michael Rosove notes that the publisher, John Murray, continued to issue the first edition for many years with the advertisements at the rear of the second volume updated as further copies were sent for binding and distribution to booksellers. The advertisements for this set are dated January 1847, indicating its earliest issue. $4850 Hill, 1487; Renard, 1328; Rosove, 276.A1.a; Spence, 993.

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10.

WILKES, Charles.

Narrative of the United States Exploring Expedition…

Six volumes in five; imperial octavo, with a portrait, 64 plates and nine maps in the text volumes, and the complete atlas bound at the end of the fifth volume; numerous vignettes in the text; without the half-titles, an unusually fine set in a handsome contemporary binding of half black morocco with marbled boards, spines gilt in compartments, top edges gilt. Philadelphia, Lea & Blanchard, 1845.

Adorned with fine steel engravings

A superb set of the first generally available edition of the great American naval exploring expedition. Wilkes’s six ships ranged from Tierra del Fuego, Chile and Peru, to Samoa, Fiji, Tahiti, Hawaii, Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines and Singapore. Two of its most notable achievements were the extensive survey of the American Northwest coast and the exploration of some 1500 miles of the Antarctic coast, ‘thereby proving the existence of the seventh continent. Equally important, the Expedition collected and described natural history specimens from all parts of the globe - specimens that eventually came to the fledgling Smithsonian Institution, making it the National Museum of the United States. In a wider sense, the Expedition led to the emergence of the United States as a naval and scientific power with worldwide interests…’ (Magnificent Voyagers, p. 9).

This is the desirable first octavo edition, of which only a thousand copies were printed, the first edition to be made generally available, preceded only by the quarto official and unofficial editions, printed in just 100 and 150 copies respectively. The official edition was published by Congress, but Wilkes retained the copyright, “to protect my reputation, being unwilling that a garbled edition should be printed by others”. He was happy with the present edition, writing to a Congressional committee in January 1845 that “the imperial 8vo. has been got up in beautiful style, and stereotyped - the paper and execution fully equal, and, in some respects as a library and reading book, to be preferred to the 4to. edition…”.

Later editions, including the second 1845 octavo edition, are smaller in size, do not include the fine steel-engravings found in the present edition, and are generally of inferior quality. $16,500 Haskell, 2B, 17B; Magnificent Voyagers. The U.S. Exploring Expedition, ed. H.J. Viola and C. Margolis, Smithsonian Institution, 1985.

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