Narrative of an Expedition to the Polar Sea, in the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 1823; Commanded by Lieutenant, now Admiral Ferdinand Wrangell, of the Russian Imperial Navy
New York: Harper and Brothers, 1842. Very Good. First Edition, 2nd Printing. 12mo [6x4in, 15.2x10.2cm], xvii, [1], [19]-302 pp., [1] advertisement, frontispiece fold out map of Northeast Siberia with routes [9.5x14in neatline, 105.x14.75in sheet]; Three-Quarter bound brown leather with blind rules, marbled paper over brown cloth covers, gilt lettering on red and black labels on spine with gilt devices, pale yellow end papers; Some shelf wear to covers, edges and corners, old chipping of marbled paper along outside/inside edges, corners rubbed and worn, chip to leather at bottom of spine, oil/wax stains to top and bottom of spine that darkens leather, rear end papers at hinges affecting text from page 220 to end and, to lesser degree, on front end papers, misfolds to map. [Arctic Biblio 18994, Howes E151, Hill 1916, Lada-Mocarski 106, Smith 10616 (London)]. Item #14094
Baron Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangell (1796-1870) (German spelling, also spelled Wrangel and Vrangel) was born to Baltic German nobility in the Russian city of Pskov. He became a Naval officer, explorer, scientist, and statesman of 19th Century Russia. Wrangell was a junior officer on a 1815-17 circumnavigation voyage by Vasily Golovin to explore the Russian American company lands off the north-west coast of America. During the trip Wrangell gained experience and studied navigation, astronomy, and geosciences.
He made an impression on Golovin and was recommended to lead an expedition to explore the Siberian Arctic coast. In 1819, the Siberian coast and Arctic Ocean were not well-known east of Novaya Zemlya. The expedition was to discover the alleged lands in the Ledovitoye More (“Icy Sea,” the former name of the Arctic Ocean) and to describe in detail the coasts of Siberia to the east of the Yana River.
This book is from the journals, and later manuscript, describing the four-year expedition (1820-23), exploring the coasts from Kolyma Creek to Kolyuchinskaya Bay in spring and summer and spending winter in Nizhne-Kolymsk. By 1823, the expedition had mapped around 115 geographical, collected information about the nature, climate, and population of the region. Wrangell also made trips over the sea ice to discover that the Arctic Ocean ice broke up during the summer months and a North-East passage to Asia may be possible. He also did not find land to the north of Siberia’s coasts, which discounted the beliefs of a land connection north of the Bering Strait to North America. However, based on peculiarities of the local climate and the characteristics of ice movements, Wrangell suspected there was a land in front of Cape Billings (then Cape Yakan). Unfortunately, severe weather conditions never let him approach it close enough to check his conclusions. Only a few years before his death an American whaling Captain Thomas Long found the suspected land and named it Wrangel Island.
Wrangell's manuscript of the 1820-23 expedition ("Journey Along the Northern Coastline of Siberia and the Ledovitoye More") was not published until 1839 translated from Russian to German by G. Englehardt. Sir Edward Sabine (1788-1883) edited the English publication of the German edition that was translated by Sabine's wife, Elizabeth Leeves Sabine (1807-1879) The book was published in London in 1840, and an edited abridged version in the United States in 1841 by Harper and Brothers. The American edition was also part of the Harper Family Library series, No. 148.
Price: $350.00