Polar newspapers

world's first polar newspaper was 1819

The Northwest Passage that connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans via the Arctic Ocean was not successfully traversed until 1906 by Roald Amundsen on the ship, Gjøa, until 1906. There were many earlier attempts.

In October 1819, Lt. Edward William Parry anchored HMS Hecla and HMS Griper off Melville Island for the first Arctic overwintering in the history of the Royal Navy. Parry had penetrated further than any previous expedition. During the overwintering he needed a way to prevent his crew from despair during the dark winter months.¹

So, he started a ship newspaper. This was the world's first polar newspaper produced by officers and crew. Submissions were posted in a locked box nailed to the Hecla's capstan. It was originally to be called New Georgia Gazette.² In its pages, however, it was referred to as the Winter Chronicle.³

Every Monday the North Georgia Gazette was a feature of shipboard life. The editorial routine was straightforward: hand-written contributions then two subordinates made a fair copy for distribution. Parry, meanwhile, made a further copy for posterity.⁴

The expedition returned that year, having failed to complete the Northwest Passage, but as Parry had anticipated, there was great interest. The North Georgia Gazette and Winter Chronicle was published the following year by John Murray due to public interest in the voyage.

Later expeditions had printing presses

In 1845 Sir John Franklin commanded an expedition comprising HMS Erebus and HMS Terror that vanished in the ice with the loss of both ships and all 134 men aboard. In the early 1850s, when Britain launched a flotilla of vessels to the Northwest Passage to rescue survivors, the Admiralty equipped the ships with presses, intended for the purpose of printing notices to advertise each ship's whereabouts and give positions of supply depots. These slips of paper were attached in their hundreds to balloons, with fuses timed to release them at intervals —but the presses were also put to use for ship newspapers. HMS Resolute issued the Illustrated Arctic News, HMS Assistance the Aurora Borealis, HMS North Star the Queen's Illuminated Magazine and North Cornwall Gazette and HMS Plover the Weekly Guy.⁵

Antarctic Newspapers

The RSS Discovery was the last wooden three-masted ship built in the United Kingdom. Her first mission was the British National Antarctic Expedition, carrying Robert Falcon Scott and Ernest Shackleton on their first journey to the Antarctic.

The South Polar Times was produced as “in-house magazine” during the RRS Discovery expedition.⁶ It was produced over the winters of 1902-3, when the ship was ice-bound in McMurdo Sound. The first issue came out on April 1903 typed with gaps left for water colours. Its contents were sophisticated, including acrostics, caricatures and puzzles. When it came home the Discovery records created a worldwide sensation. In 2012, to celebrate the centenary of Scott’s death, all twelve issues were reprinted by London’s Folio Society in a facsimile edition of 1,000. ⁷

If polar newspapers can be categorised by content, Parry's would be remarkable for its very existence, the Victorians' for their printing and Captain Robert F. Scott's for its illustrations by Edward Wilson. (who died with Scott). Wilson’s output ranged from near-photographic depictions of sea birds to luminous compositions of the landscape, faux-Egyptian cartoons of everyday life, and intricate covers for the South Polar Times. ⁸

Hester Blum’s book, The News at the End of the Earth explores printed ephemera created by polar explorers including newspapers. ⁹

1. Fleming, Fergus (2018). “Scribes in Ice and Darkness: Polar Newspapers.” The Book Collector I67/3: 422-442.

2. (North Georgia, was the name Parry ascribed to the new territory he had discovered).

3. Savours, Ann. The Search for the North West Passage . New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.

4. Ibid. Fleming.

5. Ibid.

6. Savours, Ann. “The First Publication of The South Polar Times, Volume IV.” Polar Record 50, no. 1 (2014): 112

7. Folio Society. South Polar Times was republished in partnership with the Royal Geographical Society, the British Library and the Scott Polar Research Institute as a Folio edition—a complete facsimile of all 12 original issues of the South Polar Times – Captain Scott’s expedition magazine. Review with images appeared in the Harvard Review.

8. Ibid., Fleming.

9. Blum, Hester. 2019. The News at the Ends of the Earth. Duke University Press.