The Search For Crocker Land

By

Charles Francis

Early in the morning of April 21, 1913, Ensign Fitzhugh Green left the igloo
where members of the Donald MacMillan Crocker Land Expedition spent the night.
Just minutes later, Green came running back calling out "We have it!"

"It" meant Crocker Land, the mysterious Arctic land mass Robert Peary reported
seeing in 1906. Peary had thought Crocker Land a possible continent. In 1906, the
area Peary assigned to Crocker Land was virtually unexplored. The only
corroborating evidence for the existence of Crocker Land was Eskimo legend and
myth.

Peary placed Crocker Land some 120 miles west of a hill on Grant Land on northern
Ellsmere Island. However, Peary's report was accepted neither by oceanographers
nor by scientific societies of the day. Suddenly Crocker Land was one of the
greatest mysteries in Arctic history. That was why the American Museum of Natural
History put up $6000 to fund MacMillan's Crocker Land Expedition.

Donald MacMillan is recognized as one of the greatest explorers of the twentieth

century. The Peary-MacMillan Museum at Bowdoin College serves as a permanent
memorial of his and Robert E. Peary's accomplishments in the Arctic. Because of
the two explorers, Bowdoin's mascot is the Polar Bear.

Donald MacMillan was a fitting leader for the Crocker Land Expedition. He was a
member of Peary's 1908-1909 expedition that is accorded the distinction of having
been the first to reach the North Pole. MacMillan, however, was not a member of
the party which made the final dash, having nearly frozen his feet by falling in
the water. The mishap kept him at one of the temporary way-stations.

In 1911-1912, MacMillan led his first expedition to the far North. Its goal was
the study of the Inuit natives of Labrador. Then, between 1913 and 1917, MacMillan
headed up the Crocker Land Expedition. The purpose of the expedition was to
determine whether or not the land mass Robert Peary postulated as existing
somewhere in the general area west of northern Greenland and Ellsmere Island
actually existed. In part, because of the MacMillan expedition Crocker Land would
come to be viewed as the greatest mirage on record.

One of the mandates of MacMillan's 1913-17 expedition was to reach, map the
coastline and explore the interior of what Commodore Robert Peary had named
Crocker Land. Donald MacMillan continued to believe Crocker Land existed even
though he was unable to locate it in the time allotted. It would not be until some
thirty years after Peary first named the mysterious land that the myth would
finally be put to rest.

The following is Donald MacMillan's contribution to the story of the world's

greatest mirage. The rendition is what happened after Ensign Green jubilantly
announced "We have it!" It comes from MacMillan's "Four Years in the White North"
lecture and his entry in his diary for April 21, 1913.
Following Green, we ran to the top of the highest mound. There could be no doubt
about it. Great heavens! What a land! hills, valleys, snow-capped peaks extending
through at least one hundred and twenty degrees of the horizon. I turned to Pee-
Ah-Wah-To anxiously and asked him toward which point we had better lay our course.
After critically examining the supposed landfall for a few minutes, he astounded
me by replying that he thought it was poo-jok (mist).

E-Took-A Shoo offered no encouragement saying; 'Perhaps it is.'

Green was still convinced that it must be land.

Yet, as the MacMillan party proceeded they found that the landscape before them
gradually changed its appearance as the sun swung on its Arctic course only for
the vision to disappear altogether.

Some thought the MacMillan expedition Crocker Land vision brought about by
hopefulness. One perhaps influenced by an Arctic night lasting 130 days. After
all, when the expedition had its first contact with the outside world in 1917- it
came from ship Captain Robert Bartlett, Peary's expedition captain- MacMillan had
to ask who was US president. Bartlett also told MacMillan that the US was now at
war.

Robert Peary and Donald MacMillan provide the two most reliable descriptions of
the Crocker Land mirage. What they saw was the result of a temperature boundary
between layers of air of different temperatures. The most common example is that
of the reflection of the sky of a hot air layer at ground level. Drivers often
experience the phenomena during summer on black asphalt roads.

The mystery of Crocker Land was finally put to rest by the MacGregor Arctic
Expedition of 1937-38. The expedition determined there was no Crocker Land.

Crocker Land still, however, goes down in the record books as the greatest mirage
of all time.