Keenan-Land

Keenan - country is the name of a phantom island in the Beaufort Sea, about 500 km north of Alaska.

In the 1870s, reported the whalers John Keenan ( 1835-1910 ), he had gone with his bark Stamboul in bad weather in northern direction, as he and all his men had seen at aufreißendem fog in the north country. According to other sources, he is to enter the country and have hoisted the U.S. flag. The naturalist Marcus Baker (1849-1903) proposed in 1893, the island, stand their possible existence in accordance with the Inuit legends about a country in the north, to name Keenan Iceland. On some maps this time, she worked as Kennan country (eg in Adolf Stieler's Hand Atlas of 1891) or Keenan country to find ( of 1907 Adolf Stieler's Hand - Atlas, for example in ). 1904 joined the U.S. hydrograph Rollin Arthur Harris ( 1863-1918 ) with the theory of the existence of an Arctic continent forth, which was based on observations of tides and ocean currents, but appeared to be also supported by Keenan's report. A staunch critic of this theory was Fridtjof Nansen.

The first scientific expedition that tried to reach Keenan country, the Anglo -American Polar Expedition 1906-1908, by Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880-1971) and Ernest de Koven Leffingwell (1875-1971) was headed. They had their emanating from Flaxman Iceland off the coast of Alaska's foray but stop already after 200 km. Nearer came the place assumed the phantom island which is under leadership of Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916 Vilhjálmur Stefánsson. She discovered no land, and Tiefenlotungen could expect no proximity of land. 1926 flew Roald Amundsen, Lincoln Ellsworth and Umberto Nobile, the area in question in the airship Norge. Unfortunately, they had south 85 ° North due to dense fog no view of the ice. Hubert Wilkins, who had already tried 1926 and 1928, the plane " rediscover " Keenan country, flew over 1937 on his search for the missing Sigismund Lewanewski large parts of the area and came to the conclusion that there does not give the country here.