Did you know that mirages affected arctic exploration?

How mirages have altered the course of arctic exploration

Mirages have played a part in the history of arctic exploration. Here are two notable examples.

In 1818, British explorer John Ross entered Lancaster Sound while seeking the Northwest Passage. He saw mountains blocking the sound, and decided to sail no further. Ross named the range the Croker Mountains, after the First Secretary of the Admiralty. But his officers never saw the mountains that Ross observed, and the Croker Mountains may have been a superior mirage. This mistaken impression was unfortunate for the expedition, because Lancaster Sound is indeed a route to the Northwest Passage, and Parliament was offering £20,000 at the time for a successful traverse of the passage. William Edward Parry, who had been with Ross in 1818, disproved the existence of the Croker Mountains by sailing west through Lancaster Sound in 1819.

In 1906, American explorer Robert E. Peary viewed a vast land northwest of Ellesmere Island from the shore of Axel Heiberg Island while on one of his eight polar expeditions. He named the land Crocker Land after his patron George Crocker. American explorer Donald MacMillan set out to find and explore Crocker Land in the MacMillan Crocker Land Expedition of 1913 to 1917. After reaching the coast, MacMillan and his men traveled laboriously over the frozen ocean toward what appeared to be the snow-capped peaks, hills, and valleys of Crocker Land. But the landscape ahead seemed to change its form and extent over time, and MacMillan realized that he and the members of his expedition were seeing, as Peary had seen, a superior mirage.