Lost Islands: the story of Islands that have vanished from nautical charts

Until well into the nineteenth century, navigational methods were frequently so inaccurate that oceanic charts were deceptive and unreliable. It is no wonder, then, that small islands could be reported in more than one place and volcanic reefs or even icebergs inaccurately described and recorded as navigational hazards. The fascination of such errors to a marine scientist is understandable, but this attempt to make them interesting, let alone romantic, to a non-professional is a failure. In 22 truncated chapters, he treats a selection of these non-existent islands. In some cases he is able to describe how the inaccuracies may have happened, and the voyages and personalities involved. (Amazon)

From Frances M. Woodward, University of British Columbia Library 

Water has always held a special attraction for human beings well beyond its uses in
sustaining life and providing routes for transportation.
As for islands - whether they be sandbars in a river or islands in the ocean - who does not yearn for a fantasy, a treasure, a lost island, a kingdom all their own?
The purpose of a nautical chart is to enable a ship to sail safely from place to place.
To do this, the navigator must know where all the islands and rocks, and any other navigational hazards are.
Sometimes, however, charts show islands which are not really there.
Nineteenth century nautical charts and atlases have some two hundred islands now known not to exist, but some of those islands are still shown on modern globes, commercial atlases, and official sailing directions.

SY Nimrod. 1909 voyage : search for Dougherty and other phantom islands

Henry M. Stommel, oceanographer and senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, has written at least four other books in addition to the one presently being reviewed: The Gulf Stream' A Physical and Dynamical Description (1958); Kuroshio: Physical Aspects of the Japan Current (1972); Oceanographic Atlases: A guide to Their Coverage and Contents (1978); and Volcano Weather: The Year Without a Summer (1983).
In 1981, he was honoured with a festschrift, Evolution of Physical Oceanography: Scientific Surveys.
Stommel became interested in lost islands when he noted Ganges Island, shown as being east of Japan and in a fa vourable position for oceanographic monitoring of the Kuroshio Current, the great current system of the North Pacific, then discovered that the island did not exist.
Alerted and looking further, he discovered more non-existent islands.

Stommel uses Admiralty charts, an American list of doubtful islands compiled by Jeremiah N. Reynolds for the V.S. House Committee on Naval Affairs in 1828, and the International Hydrographic Bureau list to tell his story.
He considers only nineteenth and twentieth century charts, omitting legendary and fantastic islands unless they appear on the Admiralty charts.
"Choosing these charts assures that hard-headed practical mariners had authorized and edited them and that accurate chronometric navigation was in widespread use."

Buss Island is a phantom island

Stommel has divided his story into twenty-two chapters, most of which are six pages or less in length. The chapters are arranged chronologically and geographically.
Specific islands are discussed, including the history of their appearance, an explanation of the
error, and their banishment from (or persistence on) the charts.
There are twenty-five maps, seven of which are facsimiles, including Admiralty charts of the Indian Ocean (No. 748A, 1817), and of the Pacific Ocean (first issue of No. 2683, September 1859) which are in a pocket at the back of the book.

The other maps show the location of islands discussed in each chapter.
In addition, there are eleven other illustrations including a page from the Book of O'Brasil, and portraits of Captains Benjamin Morell and John De Greaves, discoverers of non-existent islands.
Jeremiah Reynolds' 1828 list of doubtful islands and dangers to navigation is reprinted in the first appendix (twelve pages).

Bermeja : isla fantasma ?
In the middle of the Gulf of Mexico an island has gone missing… and nobody knows where it is. Bermeja Island was clearly visible on national and international maps until the middle of the 20th century. (BBC : Mexico's Missing Island)
>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

The second appendix is a bibliography of nineteen items, followed by a five-page index.
The page of acknowledgements includes sources for the facsimiles and photographs.
In addition to telling the stories of how non-existent islands have been put on the charts, Stommel has a chapter on "real islands that go up and down" including the creation of new volcanic islands such as Surtsey south of Iceland.
He describes how scientists from Woods Hole, including Stommel himself, discovered their own "lost island" which was seen both visually and on radar in 1980 but not closely examined, and which could not be found again nine months later.
In another chapter, he answers the question, "Do satellites settle the hash?"
A reef in the Indian Ocean and an island off Labrador were found on Landsat images in 1976, but very small islands and pinnacles of rock can escape detection unless they are very carefully sought for, and the analysis required is slow and very expensive.
Since 1893, few genuine islands have been discovered and "the main task has been one of extinguishing, one by one, little points of land, some of which, we cannot help thinking, ought to have existed."

This is a very readable book, with many interesting anecdotes.
It is also very informative, and can be used as a reference work. It is a good example of the use of records, ancient and modern, to explain the events of history and to make history entertaining.
It provides a good account of the development of nautical charts from the earliest efforts to the use of
the latest technology.
This book should be popular in most libraries, both academic and public, as well as map collections, appealing to anyone with a sense of adventure.


Links :

• Blog GeoGarage : Hy-Brasil, the other Atlantis
• TheMapHouse : Mythical islands

Voyage to the 'front line' of global warming

Open Passage Expedition

From AFP

When Cameron Dueck set sail to the Canadian Arctic to witness what he calls "the front line of climate change", he did so knowing he would have to brave seas that have killed scores of sailors and reduced men to cannibals.

For 450 years before the first successful voyage in 1906, people sought the Northwest Passage, a potentially lucrative shipping route linking Europe to Asia that would cut out the lengthy journey around the horn of South America.
Many died trying to find it, including Sir John Franklin whose HMS Erebus and HMS Terror attempted the fabled Passage in 1845 but sank without a trace.
Their 129 men died eating each other on the unforgiving ice.

But by the time Dueck set off on his voyage more than 100 years later in June 2009, 35 sailing yachts had made the trip.
The majority of those took place after 1990, made possible by a stark reality: the ice was now melting fast.
"I wanted to see something very few people have seen," Hong Kong-based journalist and sailor Dueck told AFP at the launch of his book about the voyage, "The New Northwest Passage" at the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club last week.
"It was about finding out what climate change looked like for real. Not just in terms of what we're told by politicians, or what corporations say in their mission statements," he said.

The extent to which Arctic ice is breaking up is an illustration of the growing impact of climate change in the Poles, where temperatures are rising more quickly than the rest of the world.
"There has been no ice for up to a month in the last several years during the summer," Peter Semotiuk, a long term resident of the Canadian Arctic and an expert on sailing conditions in the area, told AFP by email.
Semotiuk said the 2011 season featured the highest number of yachts ever to complete the Passage, with 16 making it through -- more than double the previous year's seven.
"I do see the effect of less ice cover through the Northwest Passage route," Semotiuk said, adding that commercial shipping is also on the increase as the ice melts. "It seems the whole Arctic ice pack is affected."

other videos

Dueck and his three crewmates sailed the 40 foot Silent Sound 8,000 nautical miles -- or 15,000 kilometres -- from Victoria in British Columbia, up to Dutch Harbor in Alaska, through the Bering Straight, down into the Beaufort Sea before hitting the Davis Strait between Canada and Greenland.
What they found was startling.
While the loss of Arctic sea ice threatens wildlife such as polar bears, seals and walruses that depend on it as a platform for hunting, mating and migration, the human cost is less well charted, said Dueck.
He met Alaskan fishermen who sail the Bering Sea for fish and crabs, and who are increasingly joining the dots between disappearing ice, warmer temperatures and their own changing fortunes.
Then there is the Inuit -- who have been forced to change their lives due to the impact of climate change, from harvesting berries a month earlier than they used to, to ancestral hunting knowledge being reduced to irrelevance by the swiftly warming environment.
"They used to be able to read the ice -- look at wind, temperatures, the moon phase and understand when it was safe to be on the ice and when it was time to pack up and head to shore," said Dueck.
"But these days, they no longer trust the ice, or their traditional ways of reading the ice, because it is breaking up sooner and no longer according to the patterns they know."
While Dueck admits such anecdotal evidence has not been fully processed scientifically, "when every hunter you meet is saying the same thing, that tells you all you need to know".

Then there is a sociological impact.
With climate change reducing the scope for traditional Inuit customs, younger generations face an identity crisis in a community already struggling with alcohol and other issues.
"They need to know who they are and why they are living there. Without that connection to the land they lose their identity, their pride," said Dueck.
"The hunting is a kind of safety net and when that's eroded, the communities go astray."

While the ice is a life-giver for the Arctic and its inhabitants, for Dueck it was a constant threat capable of crushing the hull of his boat and putting his crew into the water.
The dangerous voyage has been made by far fewer people than have climbed Mount Everest, but numbers have been rising each year since 2007, when the Passage was open water from East to West for the first time in living memory.
Dueck and his crew spent four months and four days at sea -- and getting on with each other was as much a challenge as navigating through unpredictable ice patterns.
"When you're on a 40 foot boat at sea, there's not much you can do if you don't like each other," said Dueck.
One of the crew did jump ship after a month as the pressures -- from on-deck showers using buckets of freezing water to the exhaustion of sailing through constantly moving ice -- took their toll.
"You don't stop, you keep going 24 hours a day," said Dueck. The crew took three-hour shifts at the helm, averaging a total of 8 hours on deck a day in freezing rain, fog and punishing winds.
"In early summer the midnight sun was still high enough that we could see. As summer progressed it got darker and darker.
"For the last half of our time above the Arctic Circle we were sailing through dark nights, so we had the terror of knowing that if you strike ice you're likely to end up in your lifeboat. That is terrifying, especially during storms."
Perhaps equally challenging is the re-entry into society at the end.
"Any time you come back from sea it's astounding how loud and how busy life on land is, said Dueck. "That was something you'd cherish in the Arctic. Time at sea to reflect. Time to think."

Iran slams Google for leaving Persian Gulf nameless

Iran on Saturday criticized Google for leaving the body of water separating it from the Arabian peninsula nameless on its online map service, saying it would hurt the Internet giant's credibility and creditability.

From FARSNews

"Google fabricating lies... will not have any outcome but for its users to lose trust in the data the company provides," Deputy Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance Bahman Dorri told the Islamic republic news agency.

Marine GeoGarage with Admiralty chart

Historical evidence shows the water has always been "Persian," and that the Persian Gulf's identity is part of Iran's territorial integrity.

"The enemies cannot hide facts and evidence about the Persian Gulf," Dorri said.
"Documents in the UN and the UNESCO show the name of this body of water has always been 'Persian Gulf' since a long time ago."
"The efforts of the (global) arrogance and its Arab allies to remove the name of the Persian Gulf will result in its name becoming more durable," he added in a reference to the United States.

While historical documents show that the waterway has always been referred to as the 'Persian Gulf', certain Arab states have recently mounted efforts to remove 'Persian' from the name of the waterway.
In early 2010, the Riyadh-based Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation cancelled sports events after Iran used the term "Persian Gulf" on medals for the event it was seeking to host.

Iran designated April 30 as the National Persian Gulf Day (video) to highlight the fact that the waterway has been referred to by historians and ancient texts as 'Persian' since the Achaemenid Empire was established in what is now modern day Iran.

In July 2009, archeological excavations in the Iranian port city of Siraf yielded new evidence confirming the antiquity of the Persian Gulf title.
The Iranian archeologists discovered Sassanid and early-Islamic residential strata as well as a number of intact amphoras used in sea trade during the Parthian, Abbasid and early Islamic eras, all referring to the waterway as the Persian Gulf.

William Hack, [c. 1690], Chart of the west part of the Persian Gulf. 

According to a book titled The Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz By Rouhollah K. Ramazani, who is Iranian the length of the Iranian coastline on the Gulf is 635 nautical miles while the length of the coastline of the Arabian Gulf countries on the Gulf is nearly double , 1113 nautical miles to be exact.
(UAE 420, Saudi Arabia 296, Qatar 204, Kuwait 115, Bahrain 68, Iraq 10). This is one reason why the Arabian Gulf nations insist that the Gulf should be called the Arabian Gulf and not the Persian Gulf. (see Maps)
Based on the coastline length on the Gulf the Arabs perhaps should be more angry at Google than the Iranians for not naming it the Arabian Gulf. (vote)

Abu Musa island which commands the vital Strait of Hormuz,

has become the focal point of tension

Note : Another point of contention between the Islamic republic and its southern Arab neighbours is the group of three barren islands in the Gulf over which both Iran and the United Arab Emirates claim territorial sovereignty.
(see WP article / video) 

Mannevillette (1745) Persian Gulf

Links :

• BBC :  Google Map's missing Gulf angers Iranians
• Online petition
• Iranian internet users have previously mounted a successful ‘Google bomb’ campaign around the Gulf, so that users searching for Arabian Gulf were directed to a page with this message

Army of sea urchins

Off the Californian coast, giant kelp grow to gigantic sizes.
They provide a good source of food to armies of industrious sea urchins, which attack them in force in a seemingly unending chase of life seeking food.

Image of the week : the Eleuthera Island, Bahamas

Image courtesy NASA-JSC Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth

This photograph taken from the Internation Space Station shows the shallow sand bars to the west (left side) of Eleuthera Island in the Bahamas.

>>> geolocalization with the Marine GeoGarage <<<

The water there is only a few feet deep.
To the east (right side) the seep water is a pure blue-no subsurface features are visible.
The spectacular underwater formations to the west of Eleuthera Island are made of calcium carbonate sand that has been eroded off of coral reefs and deposited in dunes by ocean currents.
This 2002 image was captured by astronauts aboard the International Space Station.
Located in the middle of the Bahamas, Eleuthra Island is 110 miles long, and in places just over a mile wide.
Around 8,000 people live there.