Benjamin Morrell - Assessment

Assessment

Morrell has divided opinion among geographers, historians and commentators. His reputation among his contemporaries as the "biggest liar in the Pacific", and the tone of his Four Voyages narrative, have deterred many from taking him seriously. Others, however, have considered that he has been done less than justice. "He may have been a braggart and a boaster", writes Rupert Gould, "but there is no evidence that he was a deliberate liar". Indeed, Gould asserts, the book contains a great deal of accurate and valuable information; for example, Morrell's discovery of the guano deposits on Ichaboe Island, which laid the foundations of a flourishing industry. His lack of a chronometer may have contributed to his frequent errors of position in the Antarctic leg of the first voyage; at one point in this story he declares himself "destitute of the various nautical and mathematical instruments". However, Gould rejects this explanation, since Morrell frequently refers to calculating his position "by observation", which would require a chronometer. Hugh Robert Mill says that Morrell may have been vague as to dates and places, but "that he did sail we cannot doubt, for he mentions the name of too many men still living at the date of publication to leave that matter in doubt". He adds that a man may be ignorant and boastful, yet still do solid work, a point echoed by historian W.J. Mills who points to the nuggets of truth among the mass of disinformation.

The question of how much of Morrell's narrative is believable is complicated by his own admission, in the prefatory "advertisement" to his book, that he incorporated the experiences of others into his account. Paul Simpson-Housley suggests that the details of his 1823 visit to Bouvet Island may have been taken from the records of an 1825 visit by Captain George Norris; the similarities of Morrell's Weddell Sea narrative to that of James Weddell might be similarly explained. The style of the book is described by Gould as "...simply dreadful—that of a 'spread-eagle' backwoods newspaper in Andrew Jackson's day". Gould excuses this on the grounds that Morrell's contemporaries would have expected him to write in the style of a "free-born Yankee patriot" and would otherwise have regarded him with suspicion. Hugh Robert Mill calls Morrell "intolerably vain, and as great a braggart as any hero of autobiographical romance", but finds the narrative itself "most entertaining". None of these writers mentions that the book may have been ghost-written; Gould appears positively to discount this possibility.

Contrarily, W.J. Mills finds the account "laboured, earnest and somewhat dull", but uses this as evidence to support Morrell's basic integrity: "The whole style of the book suggests that Morrell's narrative, at least in overall intent, is an honest one." In regard to the Antarctic discoveries, which are Mills's particular concern, he points out that these are given no special emphasis. Morrell does not seem to regard the Antarctic expedition as particularly remarkable, and the discovery of "New South Greenland" is not claimed by Morrell himself but is credited to Captain Johnson in 1821. Finally, Jeremiah Reynolds, despite his warnings to Palmer, included Morrell's Pacific discoveries in his report to Congress A Report of in relation to islands, reefs, and shoals in the Pacific Ocean. This, says Simpson-Housley, was surely a compliment.