A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects: From Cook’s Circumnavigations to the Aviation Age

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects covers just over 150 years of polar exploration during which a mysterious southern continent and an elusive northern sea-route became less incognita and increasingly charted and understood.

The objects of the title include instruments used by explorers and scientists, their means of transport and representations of previously unrecorded sights and creatures. Others evidence how explorers financed expeditions, survived during them or shed light on the lives of those who awaited their return in an era before the modern communications now taken for granted. While individual objects are of their own time, they form part of a continuum of polar exploration; they also evidence networks and collaborations which bind polar explorers and scientists to each other, to other mariners and those living in or near polar regions.

The 50 objects include:
• Mrs. Elizabeth Cook’s ditty-box made of wood from HMS Resolution.
• John Ross’s long-preserved canister of meat
• A rock marker left by James Clark Ross for his best friend, ‘Frank’ Crozier
• John Rae’s surveying octant
• Edward Wilson’s portable paintbox
• Ernest Shackleton’s ‘Farthest South’ sledging-compass
• A samurai sword
• Matthew Henson’s North Pole expedition fur suit
• Roald Amundsen’s fjord-side refuge
• HMS Erebus’s long-silent bell

Some objects remain in polar regions, others are in public spaces, museums, archives and galleries all over the world. They and the stories relating to them are illustrated with almost 150 images, some rarely or not previously published.

A History of Polar Exploration in 50 Objects is Anne Strathie’s fourth book on polar regions and is the culmination of approaching fifteen years of research and travel in polar regions and in Britain and other countries lying between the two extremes.