Home > Author > Stephen R. Bown
1 " The only currency that we really have to spend during our lives is time. Everything else is just a sub-category. "
― Stephen R. Bown
2 " Before Lind's experiments, scurvy was not clearly defined as a disease.The term was used as a catchphrase to include all manner of nautical ailments. "
― Stephen R. Bown , Scurvy: How a Surgeon, a Mariner, and a Gentleman Solved the Greatest Medical Mystery of the Age of Sail
3 " A hero, in his mind, was not someone who suffered disaster after disaster, heroically pulling through with great endurance, but rather one who focused his intelligence and skills to avoid disaster, thus succeeding by good planning and crafty decision making. "
― Stephen R. Bown , The Last Viking: The Life of Roald Amundsen
4 " Gjøa was later presented as a gift to the city of San Francisco, remaining on display in Golden Gate Park until 1972, when it was returned to Norway. It now resides in Oslo harbour, next to two other famous Norwegian ships, Fridtjof Nansen’s Fram and Thor Heyerdahl’s Kon-Tiki. "
5 " Amundsen slept with his window wide open at night even in the winter, claiming to his mother that he loved fresh air, but really “it was a part of my hardening process.” He organized small expeditions for himself and a few friends, such as overnight treks on skis under a star-studded sky, enlivened by the otherworldly swirling of the aurora borealis, into the winter wilds to improve his toughness. "
6 " Although I have had offers of wireless installation for the Fram,” he said in one rambling interview, “that also I declined. I don’t care for it. It is very much better to be without news when you cannot be where the news comes from. We are always more contented if we get no news. A good book we like, we explorers. That is our best amusement and our best time killer. "
7 " It wasn’t Amundsen’s job to make his men happy, but to lead them to victory, alive. "
8 " This quickly led to a fatalistic attitude. Company trader William Walker wrote in 1781 that “they are frightened of going nigh one to another as soon as they take bad, so the one half for want of indulgencies is starved before they can gather Strength to help themselves. They think when they are once taken bad they need not look for any recovery. So the person that’s bad turns feeble that he cannot walk, they leave them behind when they’re pitching away, and so the poor Soul perishes.” Many travellers, including such astute observers as David Thompson, wrote of how the men in particular, when under the influence of a raging fever, would throw themselves into the freezing water, and thereby perish from exposure. "
― Stephen R. Bown , The Company: The Rise and Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire
9 " It doesn’t seem that an individual being led through a land by the land’s occupants should count as discovering it, except in a personal sense. Mackenzie and his team should more accurately be called travellers. They were not exploring a land devoid of inhabitants; they were touring distant, populated lands for eastern economic interests. They were discovering new markets, which is not to be sneered at, as these were difficult and dangerous expeditions through geography unknown to them and into lands with people of foreign customs who were not necessarily friendly or welcoming to strangers "
10 " As the shape and interior of the puzzle became clearer, those who possessed this information began to imagine controlling it. Empires exist because they can be conceived. "
