A book that is both endlessly fascinating and a powerful demonstration of the extent to which Antarctic history is human history, and human future too.

NZ$55.00 + Delivery

Apsley Cherry-Garrard was just 24 when he sailed to the Antarctic with Scott. During a mission to collect Emperor penguin eggs Cherry’s tent blew away and the cold was so extreme it shattered his teeth

Later, he was one of the men to find Scott’s body. Despite the horrors, this book is filled with fascinating details of scientific discovery, unforgettable descriptions of landscape and a belief in the spirit of human beings. It remains a gripping story of courage friendship, endurance and adventure.

This is a reprint edition with an introduction by Sara Wheeler

NZ$45.00 + Delivery

1901. A likeable young Christchurch man talks his way into joining Robert Falcon Scott's Discovery Expedition to remote Antarctica.
Also on baord as the ship departs New Zealand: 46 men, 25 Dogs, 3 cats and 50 Sheep.

Clarence (Clarry) Hare's diary, now being published for the first time, records life on a small wooden ship in sub-zero temperatures without modern comforts, and includes a thrilling account of being lost in a blizzard for 46 hours.

NZ$40.00 + Delivery

Ejnar Mikkelsen was devoted to Arctic exploration. In 1910 he decided to search for the diaries of the ill-fated Mylius-Erichsen expedition, which had set out to prove that Robert Peary’s outline of the East Greenland coast was a myth, erroneous and presumably self-serving. Iver Iversen was a mechanic who joined Mikkelsen in Iceland when the expedition’s boat needed repair.

Several months later, Mikkelsen and Iversen embarked on an incredible journey during which they would suffer every imaginable Arctic travail: implacable cold, scurvy, starvation, frostbite, snow blindness, plunges into icy seawater, impossible sledding conditions, Vitamin A poisoning, debilitated dogs, apocalyptic storms, gaping crevasses, and assorted mortifications of the flesh. Mikkelsen’s diary was even eaten by a bear.

Three years of this, coupled with seemingly no hope of rescue, would drive most crazy, yet the two retained both their sanity as well as their humor. Indeed, what may have saved them was their refusal to become as desolate as their surroundings…

(Originally published as Two Against the Ice)

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In 1915, Sir Ernest Shackleton's attempt to traverse the Antarctic was cut short when his ship, Endurance, became trapped in ice.
The disaster left Shackleton and his men alone at the frozen South Pole, fighting for their lives.
Their survival and escape is the most famous adventure in history.

Shackleton is an engaging new account of the adventurer, his life and his incredible leadership under the most extreme of circumstances.
Written by polar adventurer Sir Ranulph Fiennes who followed in Shackleton's footsteps, he brings his own unique insights to bear on these infamous expeditions.
Shackleton is both re-appraisal and a valediction, separating the man from the myth he has become.

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In August 1897, the young Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache set sail for a three-year expedition aboard the good ship Belgica with dreams of glory. His destination was the uncharted end of the earth: the icy continent of Antarctica.

But de Gerlache’s plans to be first to the magnetic South Pole would swiftly go awry. After a series of costly setbacks, the commandant faced two bad options: turn back in defeat and spare his men the devastating Antarctic winter, or recklessly chase fame by sailing deeper into the freezing waters. De Gerlache sailed on, and soon the Belgica was stuck fast in the icy hold of the Bellingshausen Sea. When the sun set on the magnificent polar landscape one last time, the ship’s occupants were condemned to months of endless night. In the darkness, plagued by a mysterious illness and besieged by monotony, they descended into madness.

As the Belgica’s men teetered on the brink, de Gerlache relied increasingly on two young officers whose friendship had blossomed in captivity: the expedition’s lone American, Dr. Frederick Cook—half genius, half con man—whose later infamy would overshadow his brilliance on the Belgica; and the ship’s first mate, soon-to-be legendary Roald Amundsen,

Drawing on the diaries and journals of the Belgica’s crew and with exclusive access to the ship’s logbook, the author brings novelistic flair to a story of human extremes, one so remarkable that even today NASA studies it for research on isolation for future missions to Mars.

Equal parts maritime thriller and gothic horror, Madhouse at the End of the Earth is an unforgettable journey into the deep.

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Cynthia Cass talks about her book and her connection to the three intrepid women....

"They travelled on the government steamship “Hinemoa” which serviced lighthouses around the coast and was establishing castaway depots for survivors of shipwrecks on the southern islands. Ethel Richardson was my great aunt. Her eldest sister on the right in the photo is my grandmother who married the ships carpenter from the Hinemoa. They settled on the farm near Pahiatua where I live today.

The diary and an accompanying sketch book have some delightfully amusing drawings of their daring escapades as they journeyed from Wellington round the south of the South Island then to the Snares Auckland, Campbell, Antipodes and Bounty Islands. They displayed an ability to make fun from the simplest of things and teased the sailors on board unmercifully".

"I visited the Islands in 2001 and 2007 and have produced a series of paintings which were shown at various exhibitions when the book was launched. The paintings attempt to show what the islands are like and the book is a fascinating insight into the life of young women of the day. Clad in long dresses and high buttoned boots, they had little to protect them from the freezing conditions but they appeared to be willing to row boats and ramble over rocky terrain with gusto. The description of their landing on the Antipodes illustrates how intrepid they were. A sketch of them going after parakeets on the Antipodes shows that these islands are one of the few places on earth where wild beauty has existed unchanged for over a hundred years."

NZ$60.00 + Delivery

Ernest Shackleton sailed to the South Pole as the First World War broke out in Europe, intent on making the first ever trans-Antarctic crossing. South! is Shackleton’s first-hand account of the expedition, which he describes as ‘the last great journey on earth”.

During the journey their ship, the Endurance, became trapped by ice and was crushed, forcing the men to survive in and escape from one of the world’s most hostile environments.

With no hope of rescue, Shackleton and four others set sail in a small open boat on a 600-mile crossing to South Georgia. Shipwrecked on the uninhabitable side of the island, they were forced into making the first ever winter crossing of the island, all the time threatened by brutal cold and hunger.

South! made Shackleton’s name as an explorer . The dramatic story, one of the most astonishing feats of polar escapology, remains as enthralling as when it was first published in 1919

NZ$30.00 + Delivery

This is the extraordinary account of treacherous seas, glaciers and relentless cold, and wonderfully encapsulates the heroic age of Exploration.

NZ$20.00 + Delivery

SHACKLETON'S BOAT JOURNEY
By F. A. Worsley. Pbk, 135mm x 215mm, 220 pages, monochrome photographs.
This boat journey has as recently as 2001 been described as the longest and most arduous small boat journey on record. The author, Captain Frank Worsley, was a New Zealander who was also the Captain of Shackleton's ship Endurance. He was selected to accompany Shckleton and three others on the 800 mile boat journey because of his superior navigational ability, his considerable experience in sailing and handling small boats, and his great stamina, strength and positive attitude.
It is a miracle that the journey succeeded, concluding as it did with the crossing on foot of South Georgia to summon help from a whaling station. This has only been accomplished once since then, by expert climbers using modern equipment and starting from a fitness base of rest, excellent health and proper feeding.
Worsley was known as an excellent story-teller (one reason why he appealed to Shackleton), and his book is an absorbing narrative. It complements Shackleton's own account in South - the only other contemporary record of these events. It is very well illustrated with large photographs taken by Frank Hurley, inluding some of the final pictures taken with a "hand-held".

NZ$45.00 + Delivery

NZ$45.00 + delivery.

For ten months the ice-moored Endurancedrifted northwest before it was finally crushed between two ice floes. With no options left, Shackleton and a skeleton crew attempted a near-impossible journey over 850 miles of South Atlantic’s heaviest seas to the closest outpost of civilization. Their survival, and the survival of the men they left behind, depended on their small lifeboat successfully finding the island of South Georgia – a tiny dot of land in a vast and hostile ocean.

In Endurance, the definitive account of Ernest Shackleton’s fateful trip, Alfred Lansing brilliantly narrates the harrowing and miraculous voyage that has defined heroism for the modern age.

NZ$55.00 + delivery.

POLAR HISTORY See also: Nautical History and Nautical Dictionaries

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