An Account of the Arctic Regions
With a History and Description of the Northern Whale-Fishery

This 1820 account of the Arctic regions was the first book on whaling to be published in Britain.

William Scoresby (Author)

9781108037785, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 3 November 2011

670 pages, 1 b/w illus. 3 tables
21.6 x 14 x 3.7 cm, 0.84 kg

Written by explorer, scientist and later clergyman William Scoresby (1789–1857), this two-volume guide to the Arctic regions was first published in 1820. Scoresby, himself the son of a whaler and Arctic explorer, first sailed to the polar regions at the age of eleven, and was later apprenticed to his father. He became a correspondent of Sir Joseph Banks, and his extensive research on the Arctic area included pioneering work in oceanography, magnetism, and the study of Arctic currents and waves. He surveyed 400 miles of the Greenland coast in 1822. This account was the first book published in Britain which was devoted solely to the whale fisheries. Volume 1 is a general geographical survey of the Arctic region and includes detailed observations of polar ice conditions, atmospherology, and zoology. The book also considers the much-debated question of northern sea communication between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Preface
1. Remarks on the celebrated question, of the existence of a sea-communication between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, by the north
with an account of the progress of discovery in the Northern Regions
2. Descriptive account of some of the Polar countries
3. Hydrographical survey of the Greenland Sea
4. An account of the Greenland or Polar ice
5. Observations on the atmospherology of the Arctic regions
particularly relating to Spitzbergen and the adjacent Greenland Sea
6. A sketch of the zoology of the Arctic regions
Appendices.

Subject Areas: Historical geography [HBTP]