Benjamin Morrell was an American sea captain, explorer and trader. He made a number of voyages, mainly to the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Islands. His claims of distances, latitudes and discoveries have been challenged as inaccurate or impossible. He ended his career as a fugitive, having wrecked his ship and misappropriated parts of the salvaged cargo.
About Benjamin Morrell in brief
Benjamin Morrell was an American sea captain, explorer and trader. He made a number of voyages, mainly to the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Islands. His claims of distances, latitudes and discoveries have been challenged as inaccurate or impossible. He ended his career as a fugitive, having wrecked his ship and misappropriated parts of the salvaged cargo. 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. 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 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 proved false. Despite his reputation among his contemporaries for untruth and fantasy, some later commentators 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 was born at Rye, in Westchester County, New York, on July 5, 1795. He grew up in Stonington, Connecticut, where his father, also named Benjamin, was employed as a shipbuilder. 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. 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 50 nautical miles from the ship, and leading efforts to extricate Wasp when she became trapped in the ice. His subsequent voyages mainly centered on the Pacific, where he attempted to develop trading relations with the indigenous populations. He wrote of the enormous potential wealth to be obtained from the Pacific trade, but his endeavours were, in the main, commercially unprofitable. He also claimed to have discovered Bouvet Island, which lies approximately midway between Southern Africa and the Antarctic continent and is known as world’s remotest island. His journal indicates that Wasp reached South Georgia on November 20, 1820, then sailed eastwards towards the isolated isolated island.
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