This second volume of William Scoresby's journals contains the unpublished accounts of his three voyages in the Esk in 1814-16. These lengthy journals combine scientific records and social and religious comment as well as detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling, and exemplify the dangers and dramas inherent in sailing to the edge of the Arctic ice. In addition to the journals and the editor's introduction, this volume also contains a unique 'second view' of the 1814 voyage: the journal kept by a young supernumerary, Charles Steward, and an appendix by George Huxtable, FRIN, on Scoresby's navigation methods.

This is the third and final volume in the set of William Scoresby's journals. It contains the unpublished accounts of his three voyages 1817, 1818 and 1820. During the years of the voyages in this volume Scoresby's life changed profoundly. An unsuccessful hunt for whales in 1817 led to a break with the Whitby shipowners, and command of the Fame in 1818 in partnership with his father. The partnership was a brief one, and at the end of 1818 Scoresby broke with his father and moved to Liverpool, finding new partners, completing the writing of An Account of the Arctic Regions and watching the construction of his new ship, the Baffin. Meanwhile he suffered a severe financial loss and made a profound religious commitment. After his first summer ashore for many years in 1819, he brought back to Liverpool in 1820 a 'full ship' of seventeen whales, despite being faced by mutineers in the crew who earlier had been involved in piracy in the Caribbean and, apparently, hoped to seize the Baffin 'and convey her and her valuable cargo to a foreign country'. In each of the journals, Scoresby wrote detailed descriptions of his landings: on Jan Mayen in 1817, western Spitsbergen in 1818, and the Langanes peninsula in northeast Iceland in 1820. The 1817 voyage, when Scoresby and others found the Greenland Sea relatively free of ice, involved him in the renewed British interest in arctic maritime exploration after the Napoleonic Wars. The Introduction to this volume contains a major reappraisal of Scoresby's role, especially in regard to his alleged mistreatment by John Barrow, Second Secretary of the Admiralty. The volume also contains an appendix by Fred M. Walker on the building of wooden whaleships such as the Baffin that were capable of routine ice navigation under sail as far north as 80°N, based on Scoresby's account, as Owners' Representative, at the beginning of the 1820 journal.

Encouraged by Sir Joseph Banks, William Scoresby expanded the logs of his Arctic whaling voyages into lengthy journals. His scientific records, comments on social and religious topics, and his detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling are at the heart of this edited collection.

William Scoresby (1789-1857) made his first voyage in the whaler Resolution from Whitby to the Greenland Sea, west of Spitsbergen, in 1800. Three years later he was formally apprenticed to his father and another three years saw him promoted to chief officer. On 5 October 1810, his twenty-first birthday, ’the earliest at which, by reason of age, I could legally hold a command’, his father moved to Greenock and another ship, relinquishing the Resolution to his son. Another ten years would see the publication of what has been described as ’one of the most remarkable books in the English language’, his two-volume An Account of the Arctic Regions, with a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery (1820). Even before he took command of the Resolution, two developments had occurred that, when combined with his seamanship and whaling skill, were to make that book ’the foundation stone of Arctic science’ and cause the journals of his annual voyages to be remarkable accounts in their own right. First, Scoresby had studied, during two brief winters at the University of Edinburgh. Teachers such as John Playfair and Robert Jameson had made him aware of the scientific importance of his arctic experience. Together with Sir Joseph Banks, the president of the Royal Society, they encouraged him to observe, experiment and record, and provided opportunities for his data to be published. Secondly, this encouragement, and the study habits he developed at Edinburgh, led Scoresby to expand the logs of his arctic voyages into lengthy journals that contained scientific records and social and religious comment as well as detailed descriptions of navigation and whaling.

The elusive dream of locating the Northwest Passage--an ocean route over the top of North America that promised a shortcut to the fabulous wealth of Asia--obsessed explorers for centuries. Until recently these channels were hopelessly choked by impassible ice. Voyagers faced unimaginable horrors--entire ships crushed, mass starvation, disabling frostbite, even cannibalism--in pursuit of a futile goal. Glyn Williams charts the entire sweep of this extraordinary history, from the tiny, woefully equipped vessels of the first Tudor expeditions to the twentieth-century ventures that finally opened the Passage.