Benjamin Morrell (July 5, 1795 – c. 1839) was an American sea captain, explorer and trader who made a number of voyages, mainly to the Atlantic, the Southern Ocean and the Pacific Islands.

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 proven false.

[2] During the War of 1812, which broke out while he was at sea, he was twice captured by the British; on his first voyage, his ship, carrying a cargo of flour, was intercepted off St John's, Newfoundland, and Morrell was detained for eight months.

[3] On the ensuing voyage he was involved in a series of "remarkable adventures"[6] 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 (58 mi; 93 km) from the ship, and leading efforts to extricate Wasp when she became trapped in the ice.

His claims of distances he travelled, latitudes he reached, and discoveries he made have been challenged as inaccurate or impossible, giving substance to his reputation among his contemporaries for untruth, and leading to much criticism by later writers.

[9] It had been discovered in 1739 by the French navigator Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier,[10] but his plotting of its position was inaccurate;[11][12] Captain James Cook, in 1772, had been unable to find it and had assumed its nonexistence.

Gould, writing in 1928 before the continental boundaries of this sector of Antarctica were known, based his support for Morrell on the premise that Enderby Land was an island with a sea channel south of it.

[19] He added: "If at some future date Enderby Land is found to form part of the Antarctic continent, Morrell's most inveterate champions will, perforce, have to throw up the sponge.

[21][22] In the next phase of the voyage Morrell records that he took Wasp southwards and, the sea being remarkably clear of ice, reached a latitude of 70°14'S before turning north on March 14 as fuel for the ship's stoves was running out.

"[26] By this time both Wilhelm Filchner and Ernest Shackleton, in their respective ice-bound ships, had drifted close to the plotted positions of New South Greenland and reported no sign of it.

[34] Among the events witnessed and recorded in Morrell's journal were the siege of Callao, the main port of Peru, by Simón Bolívar's liberators,[35][36] and a spectacular volcanic eruption on Fernandina Island in the Galápagos archipelago, which Tartar visited during February 1825.

In Morrell's words "The heavens appeared to be one blaze of fire, intermingling with millions of falling stars and meteors; while the flames shot upward from the peak of Narborough to the height of at least two thousand feet.

[38] Morrell also records how a hunting trip ashore in California led to a skirmish with the locals which turned into a full-scale battle ending, he says, with seventeen natives dead and seven of Tartar's men wounded.

During the following months Morrell carried out an extensive survey of the African coast between the Cape of Good Hope and Benguela, and led several short excursions inland.

He was impressed by the commercial potential of this coast, recording that "many kinds of skins may be procured about here, including those of the leopard, fox, bullock, together with ostrich feathers and valuable minerals".

[51] By January 1830, Antarctic had reached the Auckland Islands, south of New Zealand, where Morrell had hoped for a rich harvest of seal, but found the waters empty.

[53] No such cargo was available, but Morrell was persuaded by the American consul, George Hubbell, that a potentially profitable enterprise would be to collect sea cucumbers (otherwise known as "Bêche-de-mer"), plentifully available in the islands now known as Micronesia.

Eventually Antarctic reached the Carteret Islands, a small atoll which now forms part of Papua New Guinea and found sea cucumbers in abundance.

"I could, with only a modest share of patronage ... open a new avenue of trade more lucrative than any that our country has ever yet enjoyed, and further, it would be in my power, and mine alone, to secure the monopoly for any term I pleased.

This spectacle, embellished with accounts of the massacre at Carteret Island and other dramatic inclusions, played to large crowds at New York's Rubens Peale museum.

[78] Woodworth exploited the public's curiosity by preparing a stage play, The Cannibals, which opened at the Bowery Theatre, New York, in March 1833 and had a lengthy and successful run.

[80] With the restoration of his fortunes and his new-found fame, Morrell began plans for a further Pacific voyage, intending to return Dako and Monday to their islands and exploit further trading opportunities.

Having lobbied unsuccessfully for Congressional funding,[81] Morrell eventually found backers who secured a converted brigantine, Margaret Oakley, in which he set sail from New York on March 9, 1834.

[85] Morrell remained in the area for several months, exploring and collecting artefacts, before departing in April 1835 for Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) in Australia for repairs and repainting.

[87] After a fruitless interval prospecting for gold on the New Guinea mainland, Morrell took the ship to Canton in China,[88] where he found a valuable cargo for New York on which he anticipated a profit of $100,000.

[1] In London early in 1837, Morrell attempted to convert some of the purloined cargo into cash, but word of his activities had spread, and the proceeds were immediately confiscated by agents acting for Margaret Oakley's insurers.

A letter dated August 11, 1843, to the editor of The New York Commercial Advertiser and signed "Morrell" could have been written, Fairhead maintains, only by someone with intimate knowledge of the Oakley voyage.

To some, he was "the biggest liar in the Pacific",[10][13] and d'Urville, who had earlier warmly praised Morrell's Four Voyages account, turned on the American and accused him of fabricating many of his supposed discoveries.

[20] Gould points to the accurate information provided by Morrell on the discovery of the guano deposits on Ichaboe Island, which laid the foundations of a flourishing industry.

[106][107] During his Pacific travels Morrell encountered groups of islands that were not on his charts, treated them as new discoveries and named them after various New York acquaintances – Westervelt, Bergh, Livingstone, Skiddy.