According to W.J. Mills, Morrell had the reputation among his contemporaries as "the biggest liar in the Southern Ocean". Mills calls the westward journey from Morrell's claimed farthest east position "impossible ... unbelievably fast, quite apart from lying south of the coastline for much of the way". In search of an explanation Mills suggests that since Morrell's account was written nine years after the voyage he may not have had access to the ship's log, and hence may "have felt constrained to invent details that appeared plausible" in order to sustain his narrative. This would explain the profusion of positional and date errors.