Samuel eliot morrisons biography for kids

Buried in the Harvard University Archives, there is a photograph of a ship gliding over water, its sails billowing in the wind, pointing to the unknown.

It looks like a boat from the late 1400s, ready to cross the Atlantic and pillage the Americas. The sails of this ship bear not the crest of a kingdom, but the insignia of Harvard.

The ship was part of the 1939 Harvard Columbus Expedition, a five-month voyage across the Atlantic.

Samuel eliot morrisons biography for kids youtube

On board were a hodgepodge of academics, sailors, Harvard affiliates, and their wives. Samuel Eliot Morison, Class of 1908 and a Harvard professor of American history, led the expedition. Through this journey, he sought to determine once and for all whether or not Columbus had sailed to the Americas based on his nautical talent, or if he ended up there by chance.

Four years later, Morison would win a Pulitzer Prize for his book, “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” a biography written using material from the Harvard Columb