“The biggest liar in the Pacific”

Today, we delve into the world of a 19th-century American sealer and explorer whose name became synonymous with geographical fantasy, leaving behind phantom islands and coastlines that haunted maps for decades.

From Prisoner of War to Captain Controversial

Source: Wikimedia

New York native Benjamin Morrell ran away to sea at the tender age of 16. Yet just a few months later, the War of 1812 between the United States and the United Kingdom broke out, and Morrell was captured by the British not once, but twice. He spent eight months detained in Newfoundland and later two years in England’s notorious Dartmoor prison.

After prison in 1823, Morrell returned to the sea, attaining the rank of captain and embarking on four sealing voyages into the Southern Hemisphere that would seal his peculiar fame.

His 1832 memoir, A Narrative of Four Voyages, ghost-written by Samuel Woodworth, chronicled these journeys, filled with adventure, violence, and geographical claims that would lead one contemporary to name him “the biggest liar in the Pacific”.

Dramatic claims from Antarctica

Morrell was prone to exaggeration and miscalculation, to which he frequently added a little plagiarism and a lot of fraud.’

Encyclopedia of Exploration

Morrell’s first voyage as captain of the Wasp (1822-1824) took him deep into the treacherous waters of the Southern Ocean. His account of this Antarctic leg is where the controversies ignite. He claimed to have reached extraordinary southern latitudes – beyond 70°S, specifically asserting a position of 70°14’S on March 14, 1823, which would have made him the first American captain to cross the Antarctic Circle.

He also described incredibly rapid eastward voyages through ice-choked seas, covering vast distances in improbable times, often against prevailing winds – feats that seasoned mariners and later historians found highly questionable, if not impossible.  

Source: RT Gould

The most dramatic claim came on March 15, 1823. While sailing in the icy expanse later known as the Weddell Sea, Morrell recorded seeing land from the masthead. He provided coordinates – the northern cape supposedly at 62°41’S, 47°21’W, with the coastline extending south. He dubbed it “New South Greenland,” believing it to be the eastern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula whose western shores had been charted by Robert Johnson (a previous captain of the Wasp) in 1821. Morrell stated he sailed along this newfound coast for over 300 miles, describing it as rich in seals and noting snow-covered mountains in the distance.  

Shackleton uncovers the truth

The Weddell Sea remained notoriously difficult to navigate due to heavy ice, preventing immediate investigation. The truth wouldn’t emerge until the early 20th century’s “Heroic Age” of Antarctic exploration.

Whilst trapped in the Weddell Sea ice, Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Endurance expedition drifted to within 10 miles of Morrell’s charted position in August 1915. Shackleton, aware of the lingering myth of New South Greenland, took depth soundings. The first measured 1,676 fathoms (3,065 meters); a later one reached 1,900 fathoms (3,500 meters).

Source: LoC

Morrell Land must be added to the long list of Antarctic islands and continental coasts that on close investigation have resolved themselves into icebergs.  

Ernest Shackleton, South, 1919

Whether it was Morrell’s intention to deceive is open to debate: he did not claim any personal glory, recognising the land as Johnson’s discovery a few years earlier. He also claimed not to have in his possession a chronometer – vital for making accurate positions at sea. It is also quite possible he was deceived by a mirage, a common phenomenon in polar regions where objects below the horizon can appear elevated and distorted.

Source: US Antarctic Program

If given the benefit of the doubt, the myth of New South Greenland might be less a deliberate lie and more a product of profound confusion in an alien environment.

Deceptions in the Pacific

Morrell’s geographical creativity wasn’t confined to the Antarctic. During his second voyage, commanding the Tartar (1824-1826), he sailed extensively in the Pacific. In July 1825, while heading west towards the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Morrell claimed to have landed on two previously uncharted islands.

Byer’s Island: Located at 28°32’N latitude, 177°4’E longitude. He described it as “moderately elevated,” roughly “four miles in circumference,” and possessing “some bushes and spots of vegetation”. Conveniently, the island was named after Mr. Byers, Morrell’s employer and the ship’s owner.

Morrell’s Island: Situated near Byers Island, this was described as “a small, low island,” also about four miles around. This one, he named after himself.  

Source: David Rumsey

The naming itself is highly suggestive. Unlike the ambiguity surrounding New South Greenland, the act of naming one island for his financial backer and the other for himself strongly hints at motivations beyond pure discovery. It fits a known pattern of explorers sometimes embellishing or fabricating finds to please patrons or enhance their own reputations.  

Byer’s Island sometimes went by the name Patrocinio on 19th-century maps. This was another illusory island, reported in the same vicinity by the Spanish Captain Zipiani in 1799. When it could not be found, some considered Zipiani’s sighting to be an earlier report of Byer’s Island.

Source: David Rumsey

The continued presence of these non-existent islands had tangible consequences. For years, the International Date Line had to be drawn with an awkward westward bulge specifically to keep Byers and Morrell Islands on the same calendar day as Hawaii. It wasn’t until around 1910, long after their existence was widely discredited, that the Date Line was finally straightened out in that region.  

Source: archive.org

Indented to accomodate Byer’s and Morrell’s islands

One of the last appearances of these islands on a published map is from the 1922 ‘The Times’ Atlas.

Source: David Rumsey

Morrell’s phantoms

A lie even in death?

Despite the widespread condemnation from his contemporaries and historians since, not everything Morrell wrote was fiction. His vivid description of a major volcanic eruption on Fernandina Island in the Galápagos during his second voyage (February 1825) is considered accurate and provides a valuable eyewitness account.

More significantly, during his third voyage (1828-1829) along the West African coast, he documented massive guano deposits, reportedly 25 feet thick, on Ichaboe Island. While perhaps viewed with initial scepticism given his record, this report proved true and economically significant, sparking a guano rush in the 1840s as nations sought the valuable fertiliser.

Source: Wikimedia

Morrell’s final years were marked by struggle. His ship, the Margaret Oakley, sank off Madagascar under questionable circumstances, and by absconding with some of its cargo to London, he was subsequently tarnished with accusations of piracy.

Source: Library of Congress

He is believed to have died of fever around 1838 or 1839 in Mozambique, possibly while commanding a slave ship. However, a letter written in 1843 to the New York Commercial Advertiser and signed “Morrell” suggests this death might have been staged to evade creditors.

Morrell eventually got his name on the map. In 1971, the UK Antarctic Place-names Committee (UK-APC) named the northernmost point on the west coast of Thule Island, South Sandwich Islands, Morrell Point. Morrell had visited the island in the Wasp in 1823.

Source: Openstreetmap

His tale reminds us that maps are not just neutral representations of geography; they are historical documents, layered with human ambition, error, and sometimes, deliberate fiction.

Further reading:

Best, P.B., Shaughnessy, P.D., 1979. An independent account of Captain Benjamin Morrell’s sealing voyage to the south-west coast of Africa in the Antarctic, 1828/29. Fisheries Bulletin of South Africa 12, 1–19.

Fairhead, J., 2015. The captain and “the cannibal”: an epic story of exploration, kidnapping, and the Broadway stage. New Haven : Yale University Press.

Gould, R.T., 1929. Enigmas; another book of unexplained facts. London, P. Allan.

Jacobs, T.J., 1844. Scenes, incidents, and adventures in the Pacific Ocean; or, The islands of the Australasian seas, during the cruise of the clipper Margaret Oakley under Capt. Benj. Morrell .. New York, Harper & bros.

Morrell, B., 1832. A Narrative of Four Voyages. J. & J. Harper.