Aurora Islands
The Aurora Islands were probably non-existent, but islands in the Atlantic that had been recorded on nautical charts for over a hundred years (so-called " Phantom Islands ").
This group of three islands was reportedly sighted for the first time in 1762 by the Spanish ship Aurora , which was on its way from Lima to Cádiz , and again in 1794 by the corvette Atrevida , which was specially sent to find the islands. Your stated position was east of Cape Horn , about halfway between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia at 53 ° S 48 ° W. The islands were last sighted in 1856. From then on, they were described as semi-mythical lands, but continued to be found on maps of the southern Atlantic until the 1870s.
It is not certain whether the Aurora Islands actually existed or whether the recurring reports about them were the result of optical illusions or atmospheric phenomena in the open ocean. According to another theory, they are identical to the west of Georgia located Shag Rocks .
The Aurora Islands are the subject of a 2001 story by Barbara Hodgson entitled Hippolyte's Island . In it, they are rediscovered by the book's hero. Even better known is the story " The Adventures of Gordon Pyms " by Edgar Allan Poe , in which Pym and his comrades search in vain for the island in one episode.
literature
- Raymond Ramsay: No Longer on the Map. Ballantine Books 1972, pp. 78-80.
- Robert K. Headland: The island of South Georgia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1992, p. 20.
- Edward Brooke-Hitching: Atlas of Invented Places. From the English by Lutz-W. Wolff. dtv, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-423-28141-6 , pp. 30–33.