Saxemberg

Saxemberg is a phantom island that is said to have existed in the South Atlantic . It appeared repeatedly on different maps from the 17th to the 19th century.

First sighting by Lindemann in 1670

Allegedly, the island was sighted in 1670 by the Dutch navigator John Lindestz Lindeman , who he discovered on August 23, 1670. Lindeman gave the coordinates of the island as 30 ° 45 'south latitude and 19 ° 40' west longitude. Lindeman made a sketch according to which Saxemberg was mostly flat, with a pointed mountain in the middle. Other surviving sketches by unknown authors showed more detailed views of the island. Major General Alexander Beatson , a resident of St. Helena , said he had drawings of the island showing various forms of plant life. Another St Helena resident, James Wathen, wrote a book in which he stated that Ascension Island , the Tristan da Cunha archipelago with Gough Island and Saxemberg formed a chain of islands 1,800 miles in length and 500 miles in Wide range.

Despite Lindeman's report, a number of seafarers were unable to locate the island on the coordinates given by the Dutchman . Apparently there were early doubts about the existence of Saxemberg and the island did not appear on all maps. The next news that Saxemberg should have been sighted came in 1804 when a certain Captain Galloway reported from the American ship Fanny that he had found the island and that it had remained in his field of vision for four hours. Galloway observed a spike rise in the center of the island, as reported by Lindeman. In 1816 a Captain Head from the True Briton sighted the island, which remained in his field of view for six hours. His statements coincided with those of Galloway.

Re-sighting by Flinders in 1809

Well-known Australian explorer Matthew Flinders tried to find Saxemberg during his voyage on the Investigator ship in September 1801. Flinders summarized in his work A Voyage to Terra Australis that he did not believe in Saxembergs existence. However, some time later he noted that he had met the Earl of Caledon in 1810 , who showed him an extract from the log book of a Captain Long from the sloop Columbus . The entry from September 1809 read:

“5 pm, saw the island of Saxonburg (Saxemberg) in an east-southeast direction. First at a distance of 41 leagues : clear weather. Calculated position of said island and found it at about 30 ° 18 'south latitude, 28 ° 20' west longitude. "

“Saxonburg Island is about four leagues long, northwest and southeast, and about two and a half miles wide. To the northwest, an elevation about 70 feet, rectangular in shape, extending about eight miles to the southeast. One and a half miles away you can see trees and a sandy beach. "

Flinders noted that “Saxemberg's position was indicated on the usual boards and maps at 30 ° 45 'south and 19 ° 40' west, about 9 ° long too short; hence it is not surprising that ships missed them. At that time there were very many birds to be seen and on the 28th the Investigator was no more than eighty miles from the position that Mr. Long had indicated. "

None of the captains who claimed to have seen Saxemberg actually went ashore there. It is possible that they mistook all cloud formations for islands. Either the island disappeared into the sea at some point or it never existed.

literature

• Raymond H. Ramsay: No Longer on the Map. Discovering Places That Never Were . Ballantine Books, New York 1972, ISBN 0-670-51433-0 .
• Edward Brooke-Hitching: Atlas of Invented Places . dtv, Munich 2017, ISBN 978-3-423-28141-6 , pp. 212-215.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Brooke-Hitching, p. 212.
2. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
3. ↑ [1]
4. ↑ [2]
5. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original from July 11, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ [3]