DeSoto died, does that count?
Cabot thought he had reached northern Asia (when he was actually in North America) and wrote all about being in the “Great Kahn’s Land.”
Orleanna (sp?) thought that he had discovered the mythological race of Amazons in South America.
Amelia Earhart is the picture-in-the-dictionary girl for female aviators, out of scale with her actual accomplishments, IMHO.
Now doubt about explorers claiming to know what they will find. They probably couldn’t get the required financial backing if their announced purpose was merely “to find out.” After all, those with the means to provide the financing or the power to compel others to do so through taxes, are men and women of action! Doers to the bitter end, who have “met a payroll,” not “ivory tower theorists.” They want “more bang for the buck” and not just a bunch of geographical, anthropological and biological information. That “don’t put bread on the table.”
I think maybe my original statement should have been that the explorer can’t be said to have failed unless he or she doesn’t return at all, or does return but with no information as to the findings.
Scott failed in that he did not become the first to reach the South Pole, and–more significantly–he did not survive the trip back.
His heroism in making the effort was so lauded in Great Britain that Admunsen is said to have complained that millions of English school boys thought that Scott was the first man to reach the South Pole. He did, in any case reach it, or come as close as Admunsen did; a photograph was taken of his party at Admunsen’s encampment.
I have been told that the notes he took during his last days were severely redacted before publication. For decades people read of how Scott and his companions faced up to their inevitable doom with the traditional British stiff upper lip, nobly sacrificing themselves for one another’s comfort. More recently the unedited notes have been available. In fact, they appear to have done a fair amount of whining and bickering–not that I know that I would blame them.
Admunsen and his plane were eventually found after his failed attempt to rescue Nobile. It appeared that his plane had flipped over during a landing attempt. It is said that Admunsen was found frozen in a sitting position, having died while reading a book.
A favorite story about Nobile’s disastrous second dirigible trip:
During a windstorm, the airship struck the icecap, severing the cabin from the balloon. A few members of the party clung to the balloon and were carried many miles. These men died in an attempt to walk to land.
Nobile and the rest of the party stayed where the cabin landed and built an encampment, including the famous “red tent”. Their first thought was to radio for help, but it was found that the radio had been damaged in the crash. Specifically, a condenser had broken.
After a few days, a crew member who did not have radio expertise asked just what a “condenser” was, anyway. After he was told, someone tried, in effect, drawing a condenser on a piece of note paper. It was attached to the radio and worked, albeit weakly. They were then able to send out a distress signal, which was eventually picked up by a young radio amateur in the Soviet Union.
This is not the occult mystery it might seem. The broken condenser had been a tube of powdered carbon. Graphite is an allotrope of carbon; by rubbing a line of pencil lead on the paper, a substitute condenser was made.
It is said that Nobile had, incidentally, nearly crashed his airship during his first trip as well. While over the pole he had tried releasing an Italian flag, and it became fouled in a propellor.
Now doubt about explorers claiming to know what they will find. They probably couldn’t get the required financial backing if their announced purpose was merely “to find out.” After all, those with the means to provide the financing or the power to compel others to do so through taxes, are men and women of action! Doers to the bitter end, who have “met a payroll,” not “ivory tower theorists.” They want “more bang for the buck” and not just a bunch of geographical, anthropological and biological information. That “don’t put bread on the table.”
I think maybe my original statement should have been that the explorer can’t be said to have failed unless he or she doesn’t return at all, or does return but with no information as to the findings. **
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Dave, keep out of this! 
I agree that folks who go out and explore and don’t find what it is that they’re looking for, but do find something not previously known aren’t failures. I’m asking this question because I’m looking for precedents. The next time someone shouts NASA hasn’t done ‘X,’ I want to be able to throw out a list of explorers who didn’t do what they set out to do, but did accomplish something.
Well, OK if you say to. Maybe I should start a thread on how many OPers have failed to make any discernable point until 26 posts down the line.
Sorry, I’ve been going about 4 hours of sleep a day for a month or so now, and I couldn’t think of a catchy way to phrase it for the thread title. (I mean, I don’t think, “Explorers Who Went Out Looking For One Thing And Didn’t Find It, But DID Find Something Else Worthy of Merit Instead.” would fit in the thread title box.
The Scottish explorer Mungo Park drowned trying to find the source of the Niger River in 1806 after a previous unsuccessful attempt. But he contributed greatly to knowledge of the region.
David Livingstone, Richard Burton, and Samuel Baker unsuccessfully tried to find the source of the Nile but advanced geographical knowledge greatly. The true source of the Nile, Lake Victoria, was discovered by Burton’s companion John Speke, a discovery bitterly disputed by Burton.
In Australia, Charles Sturt (1829) attempted to find the non-existent Great Inland Sea. Instead he managed to establish that it didn’t exist while exploring the Murray River system.
The Burke and Wills expedition (1860) was successful in crossing Australia from south to north, but all but one party member perished on the way back.
You are thinking of Francisco Orellana, who descended the River Amazon in 1541.
Many of the early explorations of the Spanish and Portuguese in the Americas were in search of mythical “Cities of Gold.” One of the best known was that of Francisco Coronado, who explored what is now the U.S. southwest looking for the golden “Seven Cities of Cibola,” which turned out to be nothing more than some adobe pueblos.