Thomas Long (captain) facts for kids

Thomas W. Long was an American whaling ship master.

Among his commands was the barque Nile. In 1867, as captain of Nile during a whaling voyage in the North Pacific Ocean, Long entered the Chukchi Sea and sighted Wrangel Island. He described its southern shores, deeming it was a bigger landmass. Long named it "Wrangel Land" after Russian Navy seaman Ferdinand Wrangel (1797 - 1870). He also named Cape Hawaii and Cape Thomas on the same island.

...sailed to the eastward along the land during the fifteenth and part of the sixteenth (August 1867), and in some places approached it as near as fifteen miles. I have named this northern land Wrangell Land as an appropriate tribute to the memory of a man who spent three consecutive years north of latitude 68°, and demonstrated the problem of this open polar sea forty-five years ago, although others of much later date have endeavored to claim the merit of this discovery. The west cape of this land I have named Cape Thomas, after the man who first reported the land from the masthead of my ship, and the southeastern cape I have named after the largest island in this group (Hawaii).

Thomas Long died at Tiksi Bay, then known as "Gorely Bay", by the Laptev Sea. There is a cross there marking the site where he perished.

Honors

The Long Strait, connecting the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea, was named after him.