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From Barrow to Boothia
In 1835 the map of the Arctic coast of North America was still far from complete, with unmapped gaps of 280km from Return Reef to Point Barrow in Alaska and 550km from Point Turnagain to Boothia Peninsula in the Central Canadian Arctic. The Hudson's Bay Company developed a plan to fill the gaps and two of the Company's officers were chosen to carry it out: the veteran Chief Factor Peter Dease – efficient, competent, steady, and with an excellent rapport with Indians and the "servants," mostly Métis – and Thomas Simpson, young, energetic, ambitious, arrogant, and cousin and secretary to George Simpson, the Company's governor in North America. Over a three-year period from 1837 to 1939, o...
Northern Lights
In the tradition of Arthur Herman’s How the Scots Invented the Modern World comes a narrative that charts the remarkable—yet often overlooked or misidentified—Scottish contribution to Arctic exploration The search for the Northwest Passage is filled with stories of tragedy, adventure, courage, and endurance. It was one of the great maritime challenges of the era. It was not until the 1850’s that the first one-way partial transit of the passage was made. Previous attempts had all failed, and some, like the ill-fated attempted by Sir John Franklin in 1845 ended in tragedy with the loss of the entire expedition, which was comprised of two ships and 129 men. Northern Lights reveals Scotl...
From Barrow to Boothia
Over a three-year period from 1837 to 1939, operating from a base-camp at Fort Confidence on Great Bear Lake, the expedition achieved its goal. Despite serious problems with sea ice, Dease and Simpson, in some of the longest small-boat voyages in the history of the Arctic, mapped the remaining gaps in a model operation of efficient, economical, and safe exploration. Thomas Simpson's narrative, the standard source on the expedition, claimed the expedition's success for himself, stating "Dease is a worthy, indolent, illiterate soul, and moves just as I give the impulse." In From Barrow to Boothia William Barr shows that Dease's contribution was absolutely crucial to the expedition's success and makes Dease's sober, sensible, and modest account of the expedition available. Dease's journal, reproduced in full, is supplemented by a brief introduction to each section and detailed annotations that clarify and elaborate the text. By including relevant correspondence to and from expedition members, Barr captures the original words of the participants, offering insights into the character of both Dease and Simpson and making clear what really happened on this successful expedition.
Furs and Frontiers In the Far North
This comprehensive history of the native and maritime fur trade in Alaska during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is without precedent. The Bering Strait formed the nexus of the circumpolar fur trade in which Russians, British, Americans, and members of fifty native nations competed and cooperated. The desire to dominate the fur trade fed the European expansion into the most remote regions of Asia and America and was an agent of massive change in these regions. Award-winning author John R. Bockstoce fills a major gap in the historiography of the area in covering the scientific, commercial, and foreign-relations implications of the northern fur trade. In addition, the book provides rare insight into the relationship between the Western powers and the Native Americans who provided them with fur, ivory, and whalebone in exchange for manufactured goods, tobacco, tea, alcohol, and hundreds of other things. But this is also the story of the enterprising individuals who energized the Alaskan fur trade and, in doing so, forever altered the region's history
