The Open Polar Sea was debunked gradually by the failure of the expeditions in the 1810s to the 1880s to navigate the polar sea. Reports of open water by earlier explorers, such as Elisha Kent Kane and Isaac Israel Hayes, fueled optimism in the theory in the 1850s and 1860s. Support faded when George W. De Long sailed into the Bering Strait in the hope of finding an open gateway to the North Pole and was met by a sea of ice. After a long drift, pack ice crushed the "Jeannette", and her survivors returned home with first hand accounts of an ice-covered polar sea. Other explorers such as British explorer George Nares confirmed it.