We live in a satellite age; for the most part, we can look at any part of the world’s surface at any time and find what we’re looking for. While the slow-but-constant process of time changes our landscape and always requires changes to maps, the general outline of the world’s landmasses are fairly well-mapped at this point. For the last century or so, we’ve known the outline of the land masses of the world (the most recent significant discovery of land was in 1948 in northern Canada when Prince Charles and Air Force islands were finally mapped by air, and it’s frankly amazing it took that long to find islands that large). The trade-off of having completed the general mapping of the planet (above water, anyway) is that we’ve lost the opportunity to fantasise about what new lands we may discover next. For countless centuries, maps of all kinds displayed hypothetical lands and phantom islands that may or may not have actually existed (almost always not). As you may guess, the polar regions were the last blanks to be filled in, being the most inhospitable locations for human travel. The race to be the first to reach the poles is one of the great modern-day adventure stories, and polar exploration today constantly opens our eyes to new and wonderful places. This entry looks at what may have been the last great mythological land on the planet.
Many phantom lands denoted through the years were the results of mirages and optical illusions; for example, New South Greenland off the Antarctic Peninsula, or Thompson Island in the South Atlantic whose sighting was later found to be an optical refraction of Bouvet Island. Some of these illusions are known as Fata Morgana, in which layers of light are bent passing through temperature layers in an atmospheric duct formed during a thermal inversion. This distorts, compresses and inverts the image the viewer sees. If the angle of light refraction is greater than that of the curvature of the earth, the images refract down toward the viewer, appearing as a band above the horizon (a superior mirage). This may appear to the viewer as though something is rising out of the ocean: an island, a plateau, a set of mountains. Fata Morgana occurs most often in polar regions, where there are large expanses of flat polar ice with uniform temperatures (other flat surfaces such as water and sand can produce them as well). Fata Morgana can even refract images that are dozens or hundreds of kilometres away that would not be normally visible over the horizon, making landmarks appears much closer than they actually are.
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| Sir John Ross |
In 1818, Sir John Ross was on a voyage which was an attempt to discover the long-sought-after Northwest Passage. Ross's ship reached Lancaster Sound in Canada. The Northwest Passage was straight ahead, but John Ross did not go in that direction because he saw, or thought he saw, in the distance, a land mass with mountains, which he believed made going any further simply impossible. He named the mountain range of this supposed land mass "Crocker Mountains". He gave up and returned to England, despite the protests of several of his officers, including First Mate William Edward Parry and Edward Sabine. The account of his voyage, published a year later, brought to light their disagreement, and the ensuing controversy over the existence of Crocker Mountains ruined his reputation. Just a year later William Edward Parry was able to sail further west, through those non-existent mountains.
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Sir John Ross made two errors. His first mistake was when he was sure he saw a land mass and mountains that were not actually there despite the objections of his officers, who must have been more familiar with mirages than he was. Ross's second mistake was to name the apparent mountain range after the First Secretary of the Admiralty. Naming what was in fact a mirage after such a high official cost Sir John Ross dearly: he was refused ship and money for his subsequent expeditions, and was forced to use private funding instead.
In the first decade of the 20th century, a rush was on to become the first expedition to reach the North Pole. During the course of these expeditions, much new information was gathered on the Arctic. Coastlines became increasingly defined as explorers rushed to fill in the final blanks on the map. One of the more famous (or infamous) expedition leaders was the American Robert Peary, who had been exploring in the North American Arctic since the mid-1880s. Over the past century, both Peary’s personal and professional reputations have taken beatings in scientific circles (rightfully so to some extent; Crocker Land wasn’t the only fictitious entry he attempted to contribute to the world map), but he is responsible for introducing important concepts to extreme travel such as support teams and supply caches (which he naturally called the ‘Peary System’), and he is responsible for mapping much of extreme northern Canada and Greenland. His most famous claim is to being the leader of first expedition to reach the North Pole with Matthew Henson in 1909, a claim generally accepted by most sources but constantly debated over, as Peary had a habit of aggrandising his team’s accomplishments in his journals, and his team had no one along who was actually trained in navigation, making independent confirmation of their position impossible.
In the first decade of the 20th century, a rush was on to become the first expedition to reach the North Pole. During the course of these expeditions, much new information was gathered on the Arctic. Coastlines became increasingly defined as explorers rushed to fill in the final blanks on the map. One of the more famous (or infamous) expedition leaders was the American Robert Peary, who had been exploring in the North American Arctic since the mid-1880s. Over the past century, both Peary’s personal and professional reputations have taken beatings in scientific circles (rightfully so to some extent; Crocker Land wasn’t the only fictitious entry he attempted to contribute to the world map), but he is responsible for introducing important concepts to extreme travel such as support teams and supply caches (which he naturally called the ‘Peary System’), and he is responsible for mapping much of extreme northern Canada and Greenland. His most famous claim is to being the leader of first expedition to reach the North Pole with Matthew Henson in 1909, a claim generally accepted by most sources but constantly debated over, as Peary had a habit of aggrandising his team’s accomplishments in his journals, and his team had no one along who was actually trained in navigation, making independent confirmation of their position impossible.
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This 1912 map shows Crocker Land (and Frederick Cook’s equally fraudulent Bradley Land) in their assumed locations, northwest of Grant Land (the northern lobe of Ellesmere Island). The supposed route to the North Pole of Cook and Peary are shown. |
Peary’s previous Arctic expedition of 1905-1906 is the one responsible for Crocker Land . During this expedition, while camping at Cape Thomas Hubbard on Axel Heiberg Island, Peary believed he saw in the distance a landmass that he believed to be about 200 kilometres away. He named the landmass ‘Crocker Land’ after George Crocker (son of railway magnate Charles Crocker), who had funded the expedition. Peary made no actual mention of his supposed discovery for another six months afterward. Most believe that he had actually laid his eyes on a Fata Morgana (assuming he did at all; some claim he simply made it up to get more funding for his next expedition, or to placate his financial backer). There was nothing to go on except for his single claim. Regardless, Crocker Land found itself on maps for the next few years.
In 1913, the explorer/lecturer/ethnologist Donald Baxter MacMillan put together an Arctic expedition that intended to make landing on Crocker Land and map it as one of its goals, along with its other task of documenting Inuit people and natural habitat along the way (one of the crew members was Minik Wallace, one of six Inuit brought to New York by Peary from Greenland in 1897 to be studied and exhibited at the American Museum of Natural History. In a rather sick and sordid tale, Minik’s father’s body soon died of tuberculosis upon arrival; instead of being buried, the body was stripped of all flesh and put on public display at the museum). In the second task, the Crocker Land Expedition succeeded, resulting in the preservation of a large collection of journals and artefacts that helped the Western world gain insight into traditional Inuit lifestyles. On the first task, of course, the expedition failed miserably. At one point, MacMillan believed he had found Crocker Land, laying eyes on what appeared to be a vast land of snowcapped peaks spanning 120 degrees of the horizon. Over the objections of one of his Inuk crewmembers, Piugaattoq, who believed it was a mirage, MacMillan ordered the crew to set course for the supposed land on the recommendation of Fitzhugh Green, the team’s engineer and physicist. As they went ahead, the image distorted and eventually disappeared. The expedition was confronted with the reality that Peary’s Crocker Land did not exist.
The return home for the expedition was even more tragic: back on land, MacMillan sent Green and Piugaattoq to explore a route to the west. The two became trapped, and a dog team died in the snow. An argument ensued, and Green shot Piugaattoq; the murder was covered up by MacMillan so as not to embarrass the expedition. (Interestingly, Green has also entered a relationship with Piugaattoq’s wife, who also happened to be the former mistress of Robert Peary and bore him two children.) The expedition attempted to return, but the weather turned against them and they were stranded in the region for the next four years.
In December 1914, MacMillan and Tanquary set off for Etah with the intention of sending a message to the outside world that a rescue was needed the following summer. They quickly ran into trouble with the weather and MacMillan turned back. Tanquary pressed on and eventually reached Etah in mid-March 1915.
Word reached the American Museum of Natural History and the George H. Cluett, a three-masted schooner completely unsuitable for Arctic waters, was sent that summer, captained by George Comer. The vessel never reached them. It ended up trapped in ice and did not return for two years.
In 1916, a second relief ship was sent and ran into similar problems. By this time Tanquary, Green and Allen had already made their own way back to the US by dog-sled.
The rest of the expedition was eventually rescued in 1917 by the ship Neptune, commanded by Captain Robert Bartlett.
Although the expedition failed to map the non-existent Crocker Land, much important research was done. A considerable number of photographs and artifacts were returned, documenting the indigenous peoples and natural habitat of the region. Hundreds of photos of the expedition and over 200 artifacts are displayed in the University of Illinois Spurlock Museum.
The existence of Crocker Land still hung on as a remote possibility until the area was traversed by air during the 1937-38 MacGregor Arctic Expedition, finally and thoroughly disproving the notion of an island in the middle of this part of the Arctic.
Source:
1. http://basementgeographer.blogspot.com/2010/12/crocker-land-last-of-phantom-islands.html
2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_Land_Expedition
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocker_Land
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fata_Morgana_%28mirage%29#Crocker_Mountains_and_Crocker_Land
5. http://nsidc.org/arcticmet/quickfacts/mirage_mistakes.html
6. http://www.trivia-library.com/b/geography-features-the-crocker-lands-mirage.htm
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