Benjamin Morrell (July 5, 1795 – ) was an American sea captain, explorer and trader who made a number of voyages, mainly to the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Islands. In a ghost-written memoir, A Narrative of Four Voyages, which describes his sea-going life between 1823 and 1832, Morrell included numerous claims of discovery and achievement, many of which have been disputed by geographers and historians, and in some cases have been proven false. He ended his career as a fugitive, having wrecked his ship and misappropriated parts of the salvaged cargo.
Morrell had an eventful early career, running away to sea at the age of 17 and being twice captured and imprisoned by the British during the War of 1812. He subsequently sailed before the mast for several years before being appointed as chief mate, and later as captain, of the New York sealer Wasp. In 1823, he took Wasp for an extended voyage into subantarctic waters, and on his return made unsubstantiated claims to have travelled beyond 70°S and to have sighted new coastlines in the area now known as the Weddell Sea. His subsequent voyages mainly centered on the Pacific, where he attempted to develop trading relations with the indigenous populations. Although Morrell wrote of the enormous potential wealth to be obtained from the Pacific trade, his endeavours were, in the main, commercially unprofitable.
Despite his reputation among his contemporaries for untruth and fantasy, Morrell has been defended by some later commentators who, while questioning his general reliability, maintain that not all his life was fraud and exaggeration. They believe that aside from the bombast and boastful tone of the account that carries his name, there is evidence that he carried out useful work, such as his discovery of large-scale guano deposits which led to the development of a full-scale industry. He is believed to have died in 1838 or 1839, in Mozambique; there is, however, evidence to suggest that this death might have been staged, and that he lived on in exile, possibly in South America.
Early life and career
Morrell was born at Rye, in Westchester County, New York, on July 5, 1795.Dictionary of American Biography, p. 195 He grew up in Stonington, Connecticut, where his father, also named Benjamin, was employed as a shipbuilder. Morrell, after minimal schooling, ran away to sea at the age of 17 "without taking leave of any member of my family, or intimating my purpose to a single soul".Morrell, Introduction, pp. ix–xi During the War of 1812, which broke out while he was at sea, he was twice captured by the British; on his first voyage, his ship, carrying a cargo of flour, was intercepted off St John's, Newfoundland, and Morrell was detained for eight months. His second voyage landed him in Dartmoor prison, England, for two years.H. R. Mill, p. 104 After his release Morrell continued his seafaring career, sailing before the mast as an ordinary seaman since his lack of education prevented him advancing to officer rank. A sympathetic captain, Josiah Macy, taught him what he needed to know to qualify as an officer,American National Biography (Vol. 15), p. 879 and in 1821 he was appointed chief mate on the sealer Wasp, under Captain Robert Johnson.
Wasp was bound for the South Shetland Islands, which had been discovered three years earlier by the British Captain William Smith.H. R. Mill, pp. 94–95 Morrell, who had evidently heard stories of these islands, was keen to go there. On the ensuing voyage he was involved in a series of "remarkable adventures" which included a narrow escape from drowning, then being lost at sea in a small boat during a gale that swept him from the ship, and leading efforts to extricate Wasp when she became trapped in the ice.H. R. Mill, p. 105 On the day following his return to New York, Morrell was appointed captain of Wasp, while Johnson took over the schooner Henry. The two ships were jointly commissioned to return to the South Seas for sealing, trading and exploration, and "to ascertain the practicality, under favourable circumstances, of penetrating to the South Pole."Morrell, p. 30
Four voyages First voyage: South Seas and Pacific Ocean
Wasp and Henry sailed from New York on June 21, 1822, and remained together as far as the Falkland Islands. They then separated, Wasp travelling east in search of sealing grounds. Morrell's account of the next few months of the voyage, in Antarctic and subantarctic waters, is controversial. His claims of distances he travelled, latitudes he reached, and discoveries he made have been challenged as inaccurate or impossible, giving substance to his reputation among his contemporaries for untruth, and leading to much criticism by later writers.Gould, pp. 255, 258
Antarctic waters
Morrell's journal indicates that Wasp reached South Georgia on November 20, and then sailed eastwards towards the isolated Bouvet Island, which lies approximately midway between Southern Africa and the Antarctic continent and is known as the world's remotest island. It had been discovered in 1739 by the French navigator Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier,Mills, pp. 434–435 but his plotting of its position was inaccurate;H. R. Mill, p. 47 Captain James Cook, in 1772, had been unable to find it and had assumed its nonexistence. It had not been seen again until 1808, when the British sealing captains James Lindsay and Thomas Hopper reached it and recorded its correct position, although they were unable to land.McGonigal, p. 135 Morrell, by his own account, found the island without difficulty—with "improbable ease", in the words of historian William Mills— before landing and hunting seals there. In his subsequent lengthy description, Morrell does not mention the island's most obvious physical feature, its permanent ice cover.H. R. Mill, pp. 106–107 This has caused some commentators to doubt that he actually visited the island.
After leaving Bouvet Island, Wasp continued eastward, reaching the Kerguelen Islands on December 31, 1822, where she remained for 11 days. The voyage then evidently continued to the south and east until February 1, 1823, when Morrell records his position as 65°52'S, 118°27'E.Morrell, pp. 65–68 Here, Morrell says he took advantage of an eleven-knot breeze and turned the ship, to begin a passage westward. Apart from one undated position at 69°11'S, 48°15'E, Morrell's journal is silent until February 23, when he records crossing the Greenwich (0°) meridian. Historians have doubted that such a long passage from 118°E, about , could have been made so quickly in ice-strewn waters and against the prevailing winds.H. R. Mill, pp. 107–108 Although some writers, including former Royal Navy navigator Rupert Gould, have argued that Morrell's claims as to speed and distance are plausible,Gould, pp. 260–262 Morrell's undated interim latitude was later shown to be well inside the Antarctic mainland territory of Enderby Land. Gould, writing in 1928 before the continental boundaries of this sector of Antarctica were known, based his support for Morrell on the premise that Enderby Land was an island with a sea channel south of it.See Gould, pp. 257, 261–262. He added: "If at some future date Enderby Land is found to form part of the Antarctic continent, Morrell's most inveterate champions will, perforce, have to throw up the sponge."Gould, p. 281
According to Morrell, Wasp reached the South Sandwich Islands on February 28. His presence there is corroborated by his descriptions of the harbour on Thule Island, confirmed by the early 20th century expeditions.Gould, p. 263 In the next phase of the voyage Morrell records that he took Wasp southwards and, the sea being remarkably clear of ice, reached a latitude of 70°14'S before turning north on March 14 as fuel for the ship's stoves was running out. This journey, if Morrell's account is true, made him the first American sea-captain to penetrate the Antarctic Circle. He believed, he says, that but for this deficiency he could have "made a glorious advance directly to the South Pole, or to 85° without the least doubt". Some credence to his claimed southern latitude is provided by James Weddell's voyage on a similar track, a month earlier, which reached 74°15'S before retreating. The words used by Weddell to express his belief that the South Pole lay in open water are replicated by Morrell, whose account was written nine years after the event. Thus it is suggested by geographer Paul Simpson-Housley that Morrell may have plagiarised Weddell's experiences,Simpson-Housley, pp. 57–59 since Weddell's account had been published in 1827.
New South Greenland Morrell's account describes how on the day after turning north from his southernmost point, a large tract of land was sighted in the region of 67°52'S, 44°11'W. Morrell refers to this land as "New South Greenland",Morrell, pp. 69–70 and records that during the next few days Wasp explored more than of coast. Morrell provided vivid descriptions of the land's features, with observations of its abundant wildlife. No such land exists; other appearances of land at or near this bearing, reported during the 1842 expedition of Sir James Clark Ross, have likewise proved imaginary.Gould, pp. 272–274 In 1917, the British explorer William Speirs Bruce wrote that the existence of land in this area "should not be rejected until absolutely disproved."Bruce, in Scottish Geographical Magazine, June 1917, quoted in Gould, pp. 270–271 By this time both Wilhelm Filchner and Ernest Shackleton, in their respective ice-bound ships, had drifted close to the plotted positions of New South Greenland and reported no sign of it.Shackleton. pp. 60–61 It has been suggested that what Morrell saw was actually the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula, some further west from his sighting.H. R. Mill, pp. 109–110 This would require a navigational error of at least 10°, and a complete revision of Morrell's timeline after leaving the South Sandwich Islands.Gould, pp. 276–282 Assuming that Morrell did not invent the experience, a possible explanation is that he witnessed a superior mirage.
Pacific and home On March 19, Morrell "bade farewell to the cheerless shores of New South Greenland", and sailed away from the Antarctic never to return. The remaining stages of the voyage are uncontroversial, involving a year-long cruise in the Pacific Ocean. This took Wasp to the Galápagos Islands and also to the island of Más a Tierra where, a century earlier, the Scottish seaman Alexander Selkirk had been marooned, providing the inspiration for the Robinson Crusoe story. Wasp returned to New York in May 1824. There, he found that his wife whom he had married in 1819, not named in any accounts of Morrell's life or career, and his two small children, likewise unnamed, had all died. He quickly married his 15-year-old cousin, Abigail Jane Wood ("Abby").
Second voyage: North and South Pacific For his second voyage, Morrell took charge of a new ship, Tartar, which sailed from New York on July 19, 1824, for the Pacific Ocean. In the next two years, Tartar first explored the American coastline from the Straits of Magellan to Cape Blanco (now in Oregon).Morrell, pp. 203–215 He then sailed westward to the islands of Hawaii, known at that time as the Sandwich Islands, where Captain James Cook had met his death nearly 40 years earlier. He claims to have discovered two new islands, Byers's Island and Morrell's Island.Morrell, pp. 218–219 Thereafter Tartar returned to the American coast and tracked slowly southwards back to the Straits of Magellan.Morrell, pp. 246–248