First NOAA nautical map in Mercator projection

Coast Survey experimented with the Mercator projection for chart 52 

in place of a polyconic projection that was predominant until 1910.

 1700 world map in Mercator (Moll)

 

 1744 world map in Mercator (Bowen)

Mercator projection is now the standard for nautical charting and is used for the majority of NOAA charts.

‘The Phantom Atlas’ book review: paps with gaps

The Phantom Atlas is an atlas of the world not as it ever existed, but as it was thought to be.

These marvellous and mysterious phantoms - non-existent islands, invented mountain ranges, mythical civilisations and other fictitious geography - were all at various times presented as facts on maps and atlases.

This book is a collection of striking antique maps that display the most erroneous cartography, with each illustration accompanied by the story behind it.
Exploration, map-making and mythology are all brought together to create a colourful tapestry of monsters, heroes and volcanoes; swindlers, mirages and murderers.

Sometimes the stories are almost impossible to believe, and remarkably, some of the errors were still on display in maps published in the 21st century.

Throughout much of the 19th century more than 40 different mapmakers included the Mountains of Kong, a huge range of peaks stretching across the entire continent of Africa, in their maps - but it was only in 1889 when Louis Gustave Binger revealed the whole thing to be a fake.

For centuries, explorers who headed to Patagonia returned with tales of the giants they had met who lived there, some nine feet tall.

Then there was Gregor MacGregor, a Scottish explorer who returned to London to sell shares in a land he had discovered in South America.

He had been appointed the Cazique of Poyais, and bestowed with many honours by the local king of this unspoiled paradise.

Now he was offering others the chance to join him and make their fortune there, too - once they had paid him a bargain fee for their passage...

From WSJ by A. Roger Ekirch

Islands that never existed inspired adventurers to undertake quixotic trips with tragic consequences.

In the spirit of modern treasure hunters in quest of lost shipwrecks, early explorers scoured the seas for islands and continents born of legend, delusion and deception.
Maps and navigation charts afforded their only guidance, and many are colorfully reproduced in Edward Brooke-Hitching’s “The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps.” The author details over 50 instances of fake cartography, including their reputed coordinates: from the Strait of Anian to the Phantom Lands of Zeno.

Athanasius Kircher's map of Atlantis, placing it in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, from Mundus Subterraneus 1669, published in Amsterdam.

The map is oriented with south at the top.

As Mr. Brooke-Hitching describes, honest mistakes, grounded in religious dogma and classical mythology, were often to blame for inaccuracies.
(Plato was among the first to record the myth of the Island of Atlantis, whose destruction, he wrote, had left a “shoal of mud” that rendered the sea “impassable and impenetrable.”)
But navigators were also fooled by optical illusions arising from mirages, icebergs and low-lying clouds dubbed “Dutch Capes.”
In the meantime the persistence of fictitious claims led innumerable generations of mariners astray.
Remarkably, not until 2012, after first being “sighted” by a whaling ship in the late 1800s, was Sandy Island in the Coral Sea “undiscovered” by an Australian team of marine scientists.

In time, with the proliferation of printing in the 1500s, the publication of salacious tales turned a ready profit.
Besides gold, silver and precious gems, far-off lands were said to contain all manner of forbidding creatures—demons, Patagonian giants and human-shaped fruit.
As Jonathan Swift mocked: “So geographers in Afric-maps / With savage-pictures fill their gaps.” Few scribes were as infamous as the 18th-century French impostor, George Psalmanazar, who claimed to be a native of the primitive island of Formosa, brought against his will to Europe by a Jesuit priest.
Years after the appearance in 1704 of his adventures, a spurious publication featuring no shortage of gruesome tales, he remained a celebrity.
When asked why he had befriended the scoundrel, Samuel Johnson avowed, “I should as soon have thought of contradicting a bishop.”

 Sannikov Land is a phantom island in the Arctic Ocean,

which was allegedly seen by some researchers to the north of the New Siberian Islands.

Contrary to the author’s assertion that the book’s lands and waterways “are all entirely fictitious,” he allows, in a few instances, for the possible impact of seismic shocks, volcanic eruptions and catastrophic erosion.
Sannikov Island, “discovered” around 1810 in the Arctic Ocean by a Russian geographer, spurred later expeditions, all in vain, before being omitted from maps beginning in 1937.
Possibly it had sunk, a common calamity for shoals saturated by permafrost in northern latitudes.

 Also known as Maida or the Isle of Mam, Mayda is a phantom island in the Atlantic Ocean located southwest of Ireland.

Sailors in the Age of Exploration considered Mayda very unsafe — a 1397 map showed it surrounded by dragons and sea monsters, and it included a warning in Latin about the dangers waiting for anyone who sailed too close.

The mysterious island first showed up on maps in the Middle Ages and continued to appear throughout the centuries, always as a crescent-shaped island.

Its final appearance was on a 1906 map published by Rand McNally, a surprisingly recent appearance considering there’s nothing to be found to the southwest of Ireland.

No less baffling was the fate of Mayda, an island in the North Atlantic that cartographers officially expunged after it had appeared on maps for more than five centuries.
Yet in 1948, in the reputed vicinity of Mayda, where ocean depths reached 2,400 fathoms, the captain of a freighter noticed a seeming change in the sea’s color and took a sonar reading that revealed a depth of only 20 fathoms and a submerged land mass 28 miles in diameter—the victim, speculates Mr.
Brooke-Hitching, of “some act of geologic violence centuries ago.”

 The Phantom Atlas is a beautifully produced volume, packed with stunning maps and drawings of places and people that never existed.

The remarkable stories behind them all are brilliantly told by Edward Brooke-Hitching in a book that will appeal to cartophiles everywhere.

It would be wrong to dismiss “The Phantom Atlas” as an exotic side-show.
Cartographic errors sowed real anxiety and confusion among mariners.
They influenced shipping routes and inspired adventurers to undertake quixotic expeditions, occasionally with tragic consequences.
“These phantoms,” the author tartly observes, “were considered a plague on navigational charts.”

Old map showing the Mexican phantom island Bermeja.
Tanner, Henry S. - A Map of the United States of Mexico, 3rd ed.

And there have been geopolitical reverberations.
Just nine years ago, in the Gulf of Mexico, a controversy was finally resolved over the reputed island of Bermeja, a Mexican possession originally recorded in 1539 on a Spanish map.
Locating the tiny island promised to dramatically extend Mexico’s nautical sovereignty to include precious oil rights in the Gulf.
Despite a last-ditch effort, neither aircraft nor a Mexican research vessel succeeded in finding Bermeja.
Diehard believers, ceding no ground, cited global warming or the possibility of an undersea earthquake—thin satisfaction at best.
Because billions of barrels of oil were at stake, the CIA was also blamed for the island’s destruction.

“The Phantom Atlas” will prove rewarding for armchair adventurers and nautical historians.
For more intrepid souls, it affords an indispensable guide to legendary sites or, just possibly, remote realms waiting to be reclaimed.
Don’t forget to bring a camera.

Links :

• Mythical islands
• GeoGarage blog : Ancient maps show islands that don't really exist / These imaginary islands only existed on maps / Mystery of the phantom islands solved: Lands that ... / South Pacific Sandy Island 'proven not to exist' / Hy-Brasil, the other Atlantis / About the Null island at 0°0'0" N 0°0'0" E / Lost Islands: the story of Islands that have vanished ... 

Scientists show how Santorini was before the 16th century BC volcanic eruption

From Greek Reporter by Philip Chrysopoulos

Scientists have discovered that before the present island of Kameni inside the famous Caldera of Santorini, created after the eruption of the volcano some 3600 years ago, there was a much older Kameni at about the same point, which was completely destroyed by the volcanic eruption, an Athens-Macedonian News Agency report says.

Santorini island on a Greek nautical chart (HNHS ENC)

 Santorini island with the GeoGarage platform (NGA chart)

For the first time, Greek and international scientists who studied the underwater remnants at the bottom of that Minoan eruption, as well as the Andesian lava pieces in the pumice stone, proceeded to reconstitute the so-called pre-Kameni Caldera and estimated its extent, the way it was created and its age.

About 22,000 years ago another big explosion had taken place in Thira — the so-called Riva explosion, from which a large semi-caldera was built.
Inside it, an island was formed, the pre-Kameni, which was later destroyed, along with parts of Thira and Thirassia and it was gradually raised within it during the most recent Minoan eruption.

This ASTER image of Santorini was acquired on November 21, 2000 and covers an area of 18 by 18 km. (courtesy of NASA)

The eruption of Santorini in 1650 B.C. was one of the largest in the last 10,000 years.

About 30 cubic kilometers of magma was erupted, forming a plinian column 36 km high.

The removal of such a large volume of magma caused the volcano to collapse, producing a caldera. Ash fell over a large area of the eastern Mediterranean.

The eruption probably caused the end of the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete.

The largest island is Thera, and the smaller is Therasia.

The Kameni Islands (dark in the image center) formed after the caldera., with the most recent eruptions occurring in 1950.

 Astronaut photograph acquired April 19, 2008

Researchers, used photostatistics, granulometry and other techniques to estimate that the pre-Kameni had a volume of 2.2 to 2.5 cubic kilometers, compared to 3.2 cubic kilometers of today’s Old and New Kameni.

 1848 Hydrographic Office (Captn Thomas Graves, HMS Volage)

According to Dr David Karaton who is an expert in Volcanology, “the topographic relief of Santorini before the Minoan eruption was characterized by a smaller port along with a central island, almost similar to today’s Kameni, according to many researchers.
But the size and age of this island had remained unknown. In our new study, we rebuilt the pre-Minoan island with the name Pro-Kameni in size and age.”
As the Hungarian researcher says, “we focused our attention on the most characteristic lithic andesitic specimens found in the Minoan pumice, which represent the explosive material from Pre-Kameni.
“Applying a photo-statistical analysis, we calculated the volume of Pre-Kameni at 2.2 to 2.5 cubic kilometers, which is smaller than the volume of Old and New Kameni.
“We also determined the age of the andesite fragments, using the Cassignol-Gillot K-Ar method, 20,000 years ago today, which means that Pre-Kahnem began to grow very soon after the previous Riva eruption 22,000 years ago.”

According to the new study, after the powerful Riva explosion that preceded the Minoan era, the pre-Minoan landscape of Santorini was dominated by a shallow, flooded caldera, where slowly, as lava came out of the underwater volcano, the pre-Kameni ascended.

Until now only very uncertain estimates could be made about its size and age.

Post-eruptive flooding of Santorini caldera and implications for tsunami generation

Nature

Assistant Professor Paraskevi Nomikou of the Department of Geology and Geo environment of the University of Athens who participated in the study told AMNA that, “the pre-Minoan caldera was smaller than today, closed in the southwest and with only one small opening in the northwest with a narrow channel.
“At the center of the shallow, flooded caldera there was a smaller than today’s pre-Kameni with a low volcanic cone.”

Combined bathymetric and topographic map of Santorini Caldera with 15-m grid resolution. 

The study area encompassing the Kameni islands is located in the centre of the Santorini caldera

see : The emergence and growth of a submarine volcano: The Kameni islands, Santorini (Greece)
Oceanographic signatures and pressure monitoring of seafloor vertical deformation in near-coastal, shallow-water areas: a case study from Santorini Caldera

Pre-Kameni was developed very quickly after the Riva explosion, with a minimum lava flow rate of 0.13 to 0.14 cubic kilometers per millennium.
This rate is much slower – about a seventh – than the average rate of expansion of today’s Old and New Kameni after 1600 BC, estimated at about 0.9 cubic kilometers per millennium.
The explosion of Thira between 1627-1600 BC during the Late Bronze Age (Minoan) was one of the largest.
The products of the explosion are estimated to have a volume of 117 to 129 cubic kilometers, equivalent to 78 to 86 cubic kilometers of dense rocks.
A part of these pyroclastic deposits on the seabed of Santorini comes from the pre-existing Kameni, which was completely dissolved by the eruption.
Its composition of black glassy andesite, which is geochemically distinct, allowed scientists to identify which products of the explosion came from pre-Kameni and which from Thira.

Links :

• Greek Reporter : New Evidence: Santorini Caldera Created From ‘Pyroclastic Flows’
• Phys : Satellite data confirms Santorini's growth
• DLR : TerraSAR-X image of the month – the Santorini volcano expands

Copernicus Marine Service

http://copernicus.eu/main/marine-monitoring

https://www.geogarage.com/page/weather4d

Links : 

• Copernicus at your fingerstips : 20 apps that you can use today !

What Beijing is building in the South China Sea

From Stratfor

Since China began its extensive land reclamation program in the South China Sea in 2013, Beijing has focused on improving its presence and infrastructure at seven locations in the Spratly Island chain: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross, Gaven, Hughes, Johnson, Mischief and Subi reefs.
Of the seven locations, the Fiery Cross, Mischief and Subi reefs received particular attention in the form of large-scale airfields built there.
Over time, China has also added harbors, barracks, radar and other sensors.
This is in addition to communications equipment, storage bunkers and general infrastructure installed across all seven islands.
Stratfor partners at AllSource Analysis have provided imagery that confirms mobile electronic warfare (EW) equipment was recently deployed to Mischief Reef.

Beijing deployed EW equipment to prepared positions in Mischief Reef, consisting of 13 concrete pads located between an airfield to the north and what is probably a motor pool area in the southeast. The imagery shows that two camouflaged vehicles, most likely mobile EW systems, were moved to the deployment site as recently as March 13.
The imagery indicates that China likely engaged in periodic training at the airfield for mobile electronic warfare operations during February and March of 2018.

The recent addition of mobile equipment for electronic warfare to Mischief Reef adds to the already-extensive electronic network on the reef.
To the southeast, China has constructed what is probably a high-frequency, direction-finding antenna array installation which could be used to collect electronic or signals intelligence from transmissions by aircraft or ships in the region, as well as to detect stealth aircraft.
North of the island, China has also built what is probably an inter-island communication tower with an associated antenna array similar to the ones found at Cuarteron, Hughes, Johnson South and Gaven reefs.
On top of that, China constructed a Doppler very high-frequency omnidirectional range (DVOR) radio system adjacent to the airfield on Mischief Reef.
DVOR systems provide short-range navigation information for aircraft without using satellite navigation data.

The deployment of EW equipment is particularly notable because the gear could be used to harass and jam the electronic equipment of various actors in the South China Sea, including the United States.
In fact, the equipment deployed to Mischief Reef could have already been used for this purpose.
A recent statement from a U.S. Navy pilot, for example, alluded to an incident in recent weeks when his aircraft was likely jammed by Chinese electronic equipment
 As Beijing continues to build up its capabilities across the South China Sea, tools like electronic warfare equipment will make the country better positioned to continue asserting its territorial claims in the region.

Links :

• FT : China installs missiles in South China Sea, says report
• CNBC : China upped the ante by installing missiles at key South China Sea outposts. Warplanes are likely next
• CNN : White House warns China on growing militarization in South China Sea
• AlJazeera : Interactive: Islands row around China
• GeoGarage blog : What China has been building in the South China Sea ...