St. Matthew Island

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German map of Africa from 1828

The St. Matthew Island is a phantom island in the southern Atlantic Ocean , which was entered from the sixteenth to the early twentieth century in reference books and on maps.

history

The origin of the legend of the island's existence is unclear. The oldest known cartographic representation is the entry of a group of islands called Sanmetyos on the map of Piri Reis from 1513, rediscovered in 1929 .

The expedition of García Jofre de Loaísa , in which Andrés de Urdaneta also took part, noted a visit to a group of islands called San Mateo at two and a half degrees south latitude on their way from the African to the Brazilian coast for the second half of October 1525 . He describes it as consisting of two islands of different sizes. There is fresh water, there are also orange trees, dwarf palms, turtles, many birds, including some chickens, and a sandy beach. The statement made that the islands could already be seen at a distance of ten Leguen , that is about fifty-five kilometers, suggests a mountain with a height of at least 1400 meters.

The Portuguese chronicler António Galvão takes over the key data of the records in his work, published posthumously in 1563, about the discoveries made by Portuguese and Spanish seafarers up to 1555, but adds, among other things, the entry that Portuguese seafarers had the island already eighty-seven years earlier, i.e. 1438, discovered. Richard Hakluyt translated the work into English in 1601, but changed the year to seventeen, i.e. 1508.

Vallard Atlas, page 6, 1547; North is down
Ortelius, Africae tabula nova, 1570
Peter Schenck, Map of the Gold Coast, ca.1700

On this basis, the island found its way into contemporary regional descriptions and general reference works over a period of around three centuries, with additions to the location, size and situation on site in some cases without giving any clues as to what they were based on. The year 1516 is given for the year of the first discovery by unspecified Portuguese, who stayed there for a few years but are then said to have left again, as the reason for the naming that the island was first discovered on the name day of St. Matthew or has been entered. examples are

  • Livio Sanuto's Geografia dell 'Africa from 1588
  • Olfert Dappers Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche eylanden from 1668
  • Relation Universelle De L'Afrique Ancienne Et Moderne by Phérotée de LaCroix from 1688
  • A British history encyclopedia from 1760
  • Jonathan Carvers New Universal Traveler from 1779
  • Johann Hübner's Real State, Newspaper and Conversation Lexicon from 1782. What is unusual here is that it is supposed to be inhabited
  • William Guthries A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar of 1801
  • Richard Brookes The General Gazetteer from 1802
  • Christian Gottfried Daniel Stein's manual of geography and statistics for the educated classes . An example of the increasing awareness that it is only a phantom island is that the fourth edition from 1820 depicts the existence of the island as a fact, while the sixth edition from 1834 already questions its existence.

The mysterious island was also drawn on maps of the region, it can be found on works by Abraham Ortelius , Gerhard Mercator , Johannes Janssonius , Vincenzo Coronelli , Peter Schenk and in the Vallard Atlas of 1547. In general, the island was at around two degrees south latitude and northeast of Ascension .

On the basis of the published information, attempts were repeatedly made to target the island, but in vain. On the way back from his second voyage in June 1775, James Cook tried to reach the position of the island from Ascension, which he did not succeed due to adverse winds. After it became clear at the beginning of the 19th century that there was definitely no land at the presumed location, the Matthew Island gradually disappeared from the reference works and also from the nautical charts, but was still to be found on the latter until the beginning of the 20th century.

Explanatory approaches

It is still unclear which archipelago Loaísa and his ships actually visited, also due to deviating records of his companions, it may be one of the Antilles islands . For later supposed sightings it is now assumed that these were based on an incorrect calculation of the respective longitude . The island of Annobon , which can be found roughly at the specified latitude like the Matthew Island , is considered a candidate for such mix-ups . With the information on the length, however, it should be noted that until 1884 that of Hierro was also used as the prime meridian instead of the Greenwich meridian used today .

literature

  • Henry Cadwallader Adams: Travelers' tales, a book of marvels. New York 1883, pp. 139ff. Reissue of 1927 available on the Internet Archive, there on page 121ff, directly to the section (English)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Gregory C. McIntosh: Piri Reis Map of 1513. Athens 2000, pp. 31f, ISBN 0-8203-2157-5 . Preview at Google Books , directly to the page (English)
  2. ↑ Martin Fernandez de Navarrete: Colección de los viages y descubrimientos que hicieron por mar los españoles. Volume V, Madrid 1837, pp. 247ff. Available online on Google Books, go directly to the section (Spanish)
  3. ^ A b José Ramón de Miguel Bosch: Urdaneta and his Times . Manila 2008, p. 42f (English)
  4. ^ Portuguese Overseas Travels and European Readers ( Memento June 12, 2010 in the Internet Archive ). Explanations of an exhibition of the John Carter Brown Library, part of Brown University, about the discoveries of Portuguese explorers and their impact on the European readership (English)
  5. ^ António Galvão: Tratado. Que compôs o nobre & notauel capitão Antonio Galuão, dos diuerdos & desuayrados caminhos, por onde nos tempos passados ​​a pimenta & espesearia veyo da Indias ás nossas partes & assi de todos os descobrimentos antigos & modernos, que são feitos ate a de era quinhentos & cincoenta. : Com os nomes particulares das pessoas que os fizeram: & em que tempos & as suas alturas, obra certo muy notauel & copiosa. No year, p. 54. Available online in the Internet Archive, directly to the page (Portuguese)
  6. ^ António Galvão, Richard Hakluyt : The Discoveries of the World, London 1601. Reprinted from 1862 by the Hakluyt Society , p. 166. Available online in the Internet Archive, directly to the page (English, Portuguese)
  7. ^ Geografia di M. Livio Sanuto distinta in XII libri. VII book, Venice 1588, p. 90f. Available online at the MDZ , directly to the page (Italian)
  8. ↑ Olfert Dapper: Naukeurige beschrijvinge der Afrikaensche eylanden. Amsterdam 1668, p. 82. Available online at the Internet Archive, directly to the page (Dutch). Translation into German under the title Actual Description of the Insulen in Africa . Amsterdam 1671, p. 68. Available online at Google Books, right by the side
  9. ↑ A. Phérotée de LaCroix: Relation Universelle De L'Afrique Ancienne Et Moderne. Volume IV, Lyon 1688, p. 588 Available online on the Mannheim University Library website , directly to the page  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (French)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / digi.bib.uni-mannheim.de  
  10. ^ Collective of authors: The Modern Part of an Universal History: From the Earliest Account of Time. Volume XIV, London 1760, p. 408. Available online at Google Books, directly to the page (English)
  11. ↑ Jonathan Carver: The New Universal Traveler. London 1779, p 16. Available online at Google Books, directly to the page (English)
  12. ^ Johann Huebner: Real State, Newspaper and Conversation Lexicon . New edition, Leipzig 1782, column 2235. Available online at Google Books, directly to the side
  13. ^ William Guthrie, James Ferguson : A New Geographical, Historical, and Commercial Grammar. 18th edition, London 1801, p. 873. Available online at Google Books, directly to the page (English)
  14. ↑ Richard Brookes The General Gazetteer . 12th edition, London 1802, p. 439. Available online at Google Books, directly to the page (English)
  15. ^ Christian Gottfried Daniel Stein: Handbook of geography and statistics for the educated classes. Volume 3, 4th edition, Leipzig 1820, p. 451. Available online at Google Books, directly to the side
  16. ^ Christian Gottfried Daniel Stein: Handbook of geography and statistics for the educated classes. Volume 3, 6th edition, Leipzig 1834, p. 507f. Available online at Google Books, right by the page
  17. ^ John Purdy: Memoir, Descriptive and Explanatory, to Accompany the New Chart of the Ethiopic Or Southern. London 1822, p. 20. Available online in the Internet Archive, directly to the page (English)
  18. ↑ a b c Mar di Æthiopia Vulgo Oceanus Æthiopicus, Jansson, 1650. ( Memento from January 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive ). Explanations for the map of Janssonius in the virtual atlas of St. Helena, created by Barry Weaver of the University of Oklahoma (English)
  19. ↑ Sherwood, Neely & Jones (eds.): The voyages of Captain James Cook round the world: printed verbatim from the original editions, and embellished with a selection of the engravings. Volume 4. London 1813, p. 248. Available online at Google Books, directly to the page (English)