New South Greenland
island in South Ocean / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
New South Greenland, which is also known as Morrell's Land, was an appearance of land recorded by the American captain Benjamin Morrell. Morrel reported the sighting on the schooner Wasp in March 1823, during a seal hunting and exploration voyage in the Weddell Sea area of Antarctica. He provided precise coordinates and a description of a coastline. Morrell claimed to have sailed along the coastline for more than 300 miles (480 km). The Weddell Sea is in the Antarctic. Because of icebergs, it was difficult to navigate, and few people did. The sighting was never investigated properly, at the time. Expeditions to Antarctica in the early 20th century proved that there was no land at the positions recorded by Morrell.
At the time of Morrell's voyage the Weddell Sea had not been named and its geography and coastline was almost entirely unknown. This made the sighting plausible at the start. Morrell made obvious errors when he told about the new sighting. He also had the reputation of liking to invent new stories. These two aspects made many people sceptical. In June 1912 the German explorer Wilhelm Filchner's ship Deutschland was blocked by ice in the Weddel Sea and drifted into the area, where Morrell had reported the new land. Filchcher searched for the land, but found no trace of it. A sounding of the sea bottom revealed more than 5,000 feet (1,500 m) of water, with no land nearby. Three years later, trapped in the same waters with his ship Endurance, Ernest Shackleton was able by similar means to confirm the land's non-existence.
Different explanations for Morell's error have been suggested. One of them is that Morrell wanted to deceive. Morrell describes his sighting briefly, and seeks no personal credit or glory from the discovery. In his narrative, he gives all credit to his fellow sealing captain, Robert Johnson, for finding and naming the land two years earlier. Morrell may have been honestly mistaken, through miscalculation of his ship's position or by misremembering detail when writing the account after nine years. He may have made the common error of confusing distant icebergs with land, or been misled by the distorting effects of Antarctic mirage. In 1843 the distinguished British naval explorer James Clark Ross reported possible land in a position close to Morrell's; this land, too, was later proven not to exist.