The Phantom Island of Google Maps

Today's episode is about things that seem to exist but don't. welcome to... Map Men... I am the men... and here is the map. ♫ Map Man, Map Man ♫ Map Map Map Man Man Many years ago, being an explorer was the best job in the world. The obvious advantages were months at sea, away from loved ones and with a high chance of starvation. But today there is no such thing as an explorer. And what do you want to be when you grow up? An explorer. Well, you can't thanks to Google Earth. Satellite technology was the death of discovery, as new aerial imagery could be used to perfectly map every inch of ter...

Wait, what was that? What was that? Back up a little. But it's just ocean. There, that black spot. Hey... something in the sea has been censored. Oh, my mistake, this is the Google map from before 2012. On the updated one, it's just an empty ocean. Wait, that's an even bigger mystery! It's time to do some research. I just read a Wikipedia summary of this incredibly boring book and it turns out that this is the location of an

island

discovered by Captain Cook in 1774. Cook was sailing in the South Pacific doing what he did best: looking for small land. large enough to represent an accident hazard or large enough to colonize.

And he did it, successfully spotting a small sandy

island

until then unknown. In a naming tradition befitting a man associated with Australia, he named it...Sandy Island. Sandy Island appeared on many

maps

, until 2012. But he shouldn't have done it. Because it turns out that Sandy Island never existed and never existed. Sandy Island is what is known as a "ghost island", an island that is marked on

maps

and believed to be real but was never actually there. So if there was nothing there, why did Captain Cook think there was? And why did he stay on the maps for so long?

And how is it possible that this error has not been corrected for so many hundreds of years, right in the era of satellites? The best way to answer this is to look at many famous examples of ghost islands throughout history, each with their own explanations. And fortunately I have made a list. Me too. I will start. Reason number one: Sailors often got lost. The sea is large with very few points of interest. So when they didn't have reliable navigation systems, fancy boats or fresh fruit, you can understand how, on a cloudy and very stormy night, it wasn't easy to find the way to Kenya.

Because it was so difficult to know exactly where you were, sailors often found land where they didn't expect it. A great example of this is the "Peeps" island from Peppy's Island. If it doesn't exist, I can pronounce it however I want. In 1683, Admiral William Cowley, on a ship called The Bachelor's Delight, was off the coast of South America when he, he "discovered" the quotes, so-called "Pepys Island." Cowley was delighted with the find and wrote extensively. about his great discovery. "The island looks nice. There were a large number of birds. We killed as many as we needed to feed ourselves.

They were very tasty." Pepys Island appeared on 110 maps over the next century even though no one other than Cowley ever glimpsed it. Many sailors tried to find Pepys Island, including Captain Cook, but no one succeeded. In the 19th century, historians looked at Cowley's extensive descriptions and sketches of Pepys Island and noted that they bore a striking similarity to the Falklands, 450 kilometers further south. Cowley had been in the Falkland Islands the whole time and Pepys finally got screwed. Reason number two... Uh uh, my turn. Reason number two: a trick of the light. Not all ghost islands are the result of navigation error.

Even when sailors knew exactly where they were, they may not have known exactly what they were looking at. In 1821, Captain William Elliot sighted an island with high, mountainous lands between Australia and South America. He called it... "Emerald Isle." So if there was nothing there, what wasn't he looking at on Earth? Because he was in such a cold part of the world, Elliot had probably been the victim of a special type of mirage. Normally, things like this pack of sea ice that are facing you appear to be facing you. But, when a temperature inversion occurs with cold air on top of warm air, a duct can form that distorts the path of light, meaning this pack of sea ice now appears to be atop a mountainous land, which It's precisely what Elliot said he saw.

These mirages are known as Fata Morganas. And as these terrifying images of floating ships demonstrate, it could be very convincing. The nonexistent Emerald Isle boldly appeared on maps for nearly 100 years, in part because no one bothered to sail here just to check it out. Reason number three: what was discovered is real, it is really there and it is land, but it is not an island. An example of... Oh, we have to take this. I'm sorry. This just in... A local boy reportedly took home a rare golden goose after climbing a bean stalk and defeating an evil man-eating giant.

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Well... where were we? Oh yeah. Things that weren't islands... The name "California" historically refers to a long stretch of the west coast of North America, of which only the upper half ended up as part of the U.S. The lower half, or " Baja California", is this long peninsula that hangs in front of Mexico. When the first Spanish explorers landed here in the 17th century, the extraordinary length of what we now know is the Gulf of California... (Ah, it's boring!) ...meant that they never reached the connection point in the summit and made the understandable assumption that California was an island.

The "Island of California" appeared on many of the earliest maps of the newly discovered continent and this now famous cartographic error appeared on thousands of maps until the end of the 18th century. Did it really take them that long to realize it wasn't an island? No. The island had been disproved several times by various explorers, but the error persisted on maps for many years because people wanted it to exist. The explorers named the fictional "California Island" after the even more fictional "California Island" from a popular 16th-century romance novel about an island populated entirely by Amazonian women.

At a time when European high society used maps for decoration rather than navigation, it made artistic, if not geographical, sense to include the famous island that educated people wanted to see. Ancient myths have been the source of a surprisingly large number of multiplied falsehoods on maps, which brings us to the fourth reason for ghost islands... Map makers are lazy. Our favorite, completely fictional island that clumsily sleepwalked its way onto real maps is this mythical one supposedly located in the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland, called Brazil. That? Not to be confused with Brazil, which is also located in the Atlantic off the west coast of Ireland.

The two are not related in any way and the similarity of their names is a complete coincidence. "Brazzle", as it is probably pronounced, is an enchanted island from Irish folklore that, according to legend, is always shrouded in fog but can be seen only one day every seven years, like that ITV documentary about those children who they became adults. . It first appeared in this Portulan chart from 1325, when inaccuracies were a reasonably expected risk of cartography and distinguishing myth from reality was a low priority. Once Brazil... (not that one) ...made the leap from fairy tale to map, it was only a matter of time before another map maker messed up and pasted it on his map because he was too lazy to do it. your own research.

And that's exactly what happened in 1375, when Brazil... (not that one) ...appeared in the Catalan Atlas. And now that it was on two maps, that was a given for all future cartographers and it just snowballed from there. Getting lost, trick of the light, lack of context and laziness are just... four ways in which islands can be mistakenly discovered. Needless to say, there are dozens more, including icebergs, pumice rafts, dense fog, and dehydrated hallucinations. So it's no surprise that through dozens of bugs on hundreds of maps, the world was plagued with ghost islands. Nowadays, ghost islands are simply amusing anomalies on maps, but not long ago, for some sailors, ghost islands were a very serious nuisance.

In 1909, Ernest Shackleton and his crew were aboard HMS Nimrod returning home after a failed attempt to reach the South Pole. (Boo!) (Sorry, guys.) Looking at his map, Shackleton planned some much-needed rest stops between Sydney and South America. Unfortunately the first of them was Royal Island. Which turned out to be a ghost island. Luckily, they had the Emerald Isle to aim for next. But, as discussed 5 minutes and 49 seconds ago, the Emerald Isle turned out to be another ghost island. Undaunted, the exhausted crew continued toward Nimrod Island. Which turned out to be another ghost island. Leaving only Dougherty Island, which... turned out to be another ghost island, making this the greatest voyage of discovery in the history of exploration. (...Yaay?) Fortunately, for anyone trying to sail from Sydney to South America today, almost all of the ghost islands ended up undiscovered by the mid-20th century.

But how did Sandy Island manage to continue appearing on Google Maps until 2012? Oh yeah, I was going to tell you, sorry. Erm... It all depended on the French. Sandy Island, if it existed, would belong to and be the cartographic responsibility of France, as it is located in the region of French New Caledonia. Its existence had been in doubt since the beginning of the 20th century. Then, in 1974, a French aerial reconnaissance mission went to check out their island and, to their surprise, certified that there was nothing there. By the way, this is the second time we've talked about France getting smaller as a result of a proper survey.

Having not discovered their own territory, the French did their best to tell everyone that there was less France in the world. Fast forward to the 21st century when Google created its digital maps with satellite view. The satellite view is not created, as you would expect, by taking many photos, stitching them together, and adding the map detail on top. It is much faster, easier and more accurate to do it the other way around. The pre-2012 edition used mapping data from the US National Imaging and Mapping Agency. Data that had been digitized based on old maps prior to the French discovery.

Then the satellites found sea but their maps showed there should be land. And that's why they add a big black spot... which means "error." Because most people use satellite view only to see their own home and this was a part of the world where fish don't even have phone access, this spot went largely unnoticed. Until in 2012, a curious Australian research ship decided to deviate to verify the discrepancy once and for all. And when they arrived there on November 26th they announced to the world..."No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no." So even in the world of digital satellite maps there are still parts of the world that remain mysterious and I could still become an explorer.

Not because you don't have a boat. Oh. It's very easy to make fun of scouts who made silly mistakes, but before you let yourself go, consider this. Discovering the land was his job. They got paid to do it, and they got paid more the more they did it. So even if Cook had doubts about what he saw... Hmm, it could be driftwood... he was encouraged to claim that it was land for king and country. Have you seen anything sir? Um...uh...yeah. ground...mark it as ground. Today in 2024, the world map is completely perfect and we are sure that nothing will or will never be discovered again.