The Open Polar Sea

Abstract

N rOT a speck of ice was to be seen. As far as I could discern, sea was open, a swell coming in from northward and running crosswise, as if with a small eastern set. The wind was due N.,-enough of it to make white caps,-and surf broke in on rocks in regular breakers. The Open Polar Sea! The time was June 24, i854. William Morton, one of crew of Dr. Elisha Kent Kane's Second Grinnell Expedition,, stood on summit of mighty cliffs along Greenland northwest coast to which Kane later gave name Cape Constitution. The latitude was 800 30' N., farther north than any white man had yet reached in Western Hemisphere, and coast line before Morton marked northernmost known land on face of earth. On other side of Kennedy Channel, Grinnell Land stretched off some 50 miles toward North Pole. Morton, alas, was mistaken. There is no Open Polar Sea. But during next 25 years his report and interpretation Dr. Kane and others put upon it gave a feverish vitality to a dying theory. Belief in open water and a mild clime in the realm of Boreal Pole had persisted for centuries. Inherently it was neither an absurd nor an unimportant theory. Hardheaded seamen and explorers and reputable geographers upheld it, and its record helps explain much that would otherwise be obscure in history of Arctic discovery. Today it is perhaps of greatest interest as providing an illustration of nature and growth of scientific error. Since it has been conclusively disproved, we may compare it with facts and see clearly wherein its proponents went astray.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 36 citations exist upstream.