Journal of Lieutenant Wyatt Rawson while aboard HMS ALERT, Nares Arctic expedition.

Lieutenant Wyatt Rawson’s journal of the 1875-76 British naval arctic expedition, the last naval attempt to reach the North Pole by the putative Open Polar Sea. The expedition, led by Sir George Strong Nares and comprising the ALERT and the DISCOVERY (captained by Henry Frederick Stephenson), was unsuccessful, but succeeded in mapping new areas of Greenland, collecting large quantities of scientific data and reaching a record northern latitude. The journal, which spans 1 March to 6 April 1876, includes temperature readings, Rawson’s account of the aftermath of a disastrous sledging trip, stories of frostbite injuries, and his and several other officers’ formation of a drinking club, “the Stiff and Reasonables”. Rawson has also used the journal as a scrapbook, incorporating his own sketches and water colours of the expedition’s arctic surroundings, clothing and activities, as well as printed programmes from the ships’ entertainments and navigation charts. Two pages recording entries for 15th-18th August 1876 have been interposed between 19th March and 5th April. These pages have been cut out at the margin, but remain present.

A complete transcript of the journal is also available as JOD/340/2.

Five further volumes of Rawson’s journal from the 1875-76 expedition are held at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, which also holds a collection of Nares’s papers.