| 0: Antillia (Mayda) Ver detalle |
| 1: Aurora Islands Ver detalle |
| 2: Buss Island Ver detalle |
| 3: Dougherty Island Ver detalle |
| 4: Ernest Legouve Reef Ver detalle |
| 5: Maria Theresa Reef Ver detalle |
| 6: Sannikov Land Ver detalle |
| 7: Schjetman Reef Ver detalle |
| 8: Tuanaki Ver detalle |
| 9: Île Philippaux Ver detalle |
Antillia (or Antilia) was a phantom island said to lie in the Atlantic Ocean far to the west of Spain. This mythical island had several other names such as Isle of Seven Cities, Isla das Sete Cidades (Portuguese), Septe Cidades, Sanbrandan (or St Brendan).
A Portuguese legend tells how the island was settled by the Archbishop of Porto accompanied by six bishops and their parishioners in either 714 or 734 in the face of the Moorish conquest of Iberia.
On maps, Antillia was typically shown as being almost the size of Portugal, lying around two hundred miles west of the Azores. It was an almost perfect rectangle, its long axis running north-south, but with seven or eight trefoil bays shared between the east and west coasts. This has made some scholars to identify the island as Puerto Rico. Each city lay on a bay. The similar island of Saluaga was shown north of Antillia, while Taumar and Ymana (or Roillo) lay nearby.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia
The Aurora Islands were a group of three islands first reported in 1762 by the Spanish ship Aurora while sailing from Lima to Cádiz, and then again in 1794 by the corvette Atrevida, which had been sent to find them. Their reported location was east of Cape Horn, approximately half way between the Falkland Islands and South Georgia at 53° S 48° W.
The islands were last sighted in 1856, and have subsequently been ascribed a mythical status, although they continued to appear on maps of the south Atlantic until the 1870s.
It is unknown if the Aurora Islands ever actually existed, or if persistent reports of them may have simply been the result of mid-ocean atmospheric peculiarities or optical illusions. Another opinion is that the Aurora Islands are the Shag Rocks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aurora_Islands
Buss Island is a phantom island. It was discovered during the third expedition of Martin Frobisher in September 1578 by sailors aboard the Emmanuel and was put on maps as existing between Ireland and mythical Frisland at about 57° N. The island was named after the type of vessel that its discoverers used, a busse. It is believed that Frobisher took Greenland for Frisland and Baffin Island for Greenland and the Emmanuel, returning home, made a mistake in dead reckoning and mistook optical effects near Greenland at around 62° N for a new land.
A Thomas Shepard claimed to have explored and mapped the island in 1671. As Atlantic traffic increased the island's existence was less certain and its supposed size was greatly reduced. In 1745 it was suggested that the island had 'sunk' as the supposed area was relatively shallow. The island or 'site of sunken island' persisted on charts into the 19th century.
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buss_Island"
Dougherty is the name of a phantom island believed to be located in the southern hemisphere. In 1841, captain Dougherty from ship James Stewart located it at 59°20S 120°20W. In 1859, british captain Keates confirm the location. In 1893 the New Zealand captain White circumnavigated the island. Then the island vanished. It was removed from charts in 1932.
South Pacific (south of French Tuamotu islands and east of New Zealand) Ernest?Legouvé Reef was reported in 1902 by the unnamed captain of the French ship "Ernest?Legouvé". The reef was about 100 meters long and another reef was sighted near it.
It is situated at 35'E 12'S, 150'E 40'W.
The reef was recorded in Paris notice to mariners 164/1122/1902, and the International Hydrographic Bureau stated it on February 9, 1957. It was searched for in 1982 and 1983, but not found. It may well be a phantom island.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ernest_Legouve_Reef
South Pacific (south of French Tuamotu islands and east of New Zealand) Maria-Theresa Reef was reported on 16 November 1843 by a Captain Asaph P. Taber (not "Tabor") of the Maria-Theresa, a New Bedford, Massachusetts, whaler, to be is situated at 37°00'S, 151°13'W. It was unsucessfully searched for in 1957. In 1983, the position of the reef was recalculated at 36°50'S, 136°39'W and searched for, but not found. Its existence is doubtful. It may well be a phantom island.
On French maps, this reef was mentioned as "Tabor reef". Under this name, it appears in Jules Verne's novel "The Mysterious Island". As for now, it's missing from some maps and is present on others, so its current state is not verified.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa_Reef
Sannikov Land (????? ????????? in Russian) was a phantom island in the Arctic Ocean that had supposedly been "observed" by some explorers to the north of the New Siberian Islands. Yakov Sannikov was the first one to report the sighting of the this island in 1811 (hence, the name "Sannikov Land"). In 1886 and 1893, another Russian explorer Eduard Toll reported observing the island. Despite the intensified search, it was finally established in the first half of the 20th century that the Sannikov Land didn't exist.
Some scholars, judging from other successes of Sannikov, believe that the Sannikov Land indeed existed, but was destroyed by water and disappeared from the face of the ocean like many other islands, formed either of fossilized ice or of permafrost. This process of disappearing of Arctic islands, e.g., of the New Siberian Islands archipelago continues.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sannikov_Land
Schjetman Reef is a supposed phantom island, reported discovered by the Norwegian captain Ole Andreas Schjetnan in 1868. He reported its coordinates to be 16°8? N 178°58? W. The island was reported to be 1.5 nautical miles long (north-to-south), and half a nautical mile wide (east-to-west). Since Schjetnan's discovery, various expeditions have set out to attempt to find the island. The USS Alert in 1880, the USS Milwaukee in 1923, and the USS Whipporville and USS Tanager in 1924 - all searched for the island without finding it. A sighting was reported in 1990, however, by a sailor from Hawaii.
An expedition to find the island is shceduled for January of 2006, by the two Norwegians Bård Sæther and Arild Solheim in the S/Y Havaiki.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schjetman_Reef
Tuanaki comprised a group of three small islands in the Cook archipelago, within two days’ sail of the Island of Mangaia. They were inhabited by a Polynesian people as skilled in seafaring as any of their brothers throughout the Pacific. In 1916 th ePolynesian Society of Honolulu published account of a sailor who had visited Tuanaki in 1842. He spent six days there. The people, according to this witness, were peaceful and friendly, loved to dance and sing, and knew nothing of war. But two years later, in 1844, a group of English missionaries were dispatched to Tuanaki, and their schooner combed the entire area of sea without finding the islands.
Some time within those two years, the isles of Tuanaki sank or were in some manner destroyed. And since the island people were expert seamen, and no islanders survived to bring the news, the destruction must have occurred with great suddenness. The only Tuanakians known to have been alive after 1842 were a few who had earlier emigrated to Rarotonga, and some of them are said to have lived until the 20th century.
Île Philippaux is a phantom island believed at one time to be real, shown on early maps of Lake Superior as located between the Keweenaw Peninsula and Isle Royale. Though imaginary, this island was used as part of the definition of the water boundary between the United States and Canada.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Île_Philippaux