stefansson-wrangel-09-26-001-020

15
In 1867 the United States had just purchased Alaska from Russia.
Through that transaction a former Russian Governor of the territory had become
well known in the United States. He was the same Wrangell (now both Baron and
Admiral). That year several American whalers were cruising to the north of
Bering Straits. One of them, Captain Thomas Long, came in sight of an island
that was not down on the chart which he happened to have with him. Thinking it
a discovery, and being familiar not only with Wrangell's governorship of Alaska,
but also with his earlier career as an explorer, more than forty years before, Captain
Long suggested to a newspaper man when he returned to the Hawaiian Islands that
the land (which he supposed himself to have discovered) should be named after
Wrangell. It was thus the present name came into popular use, although it was
not generally adopted by mapmakers at that time.

During the season 1867 was icefree in the region north of Bering Straits
and Kellett's Land was visited by several American whalers, including Captains
Thomas and Williams, who established the fact that "Plover Island" was merely a
headland on Kellett's Land.

Thirteen years afterwards later a German, Captain Dallman of Hamburg,
claimed to have anticipated Long's visit to Kellett's Land by a year, but after that
lapse of time he was unable to produce his log or any member of his crew to,
support his claim. The erroneous reports on the extent of the eastern coast of Kellett's Land gave
fresh support to the false conception of its size. In 1869 one of the visitors,
Captain Bliven, gave the opinion that it extended several hundred miles to the
north, strengthening the apparent probability that it was part of
"The Arctic Continent."

The hypothetical arctic continent was still in the minds of
scientists when Lieutenant De Long was fitted out by the New York Herald in 1879.
He steered the Jeannette boldly northward from the Pacific into the ice beyond
Bering Straits, thinking that he could not drift far, for the "continent" would
bar the way. But,fast in the pack,he did drift far - right across the theoretical