Phantom Islands of the Atlantic

This is more for the map and exploration buff than those who like ancient sea lore for its own sake. So if Atlantis, Lemuria, Mu and the fabled kingdom of El Dorado are your fare, this is not the book for you. It is a quite scientific and literal, rather than literary, tour of some Atlantic landfalls that were mis-labelled and badly charted, and how later expeditions relocated, redefined and eventually eliminated the fabled islands. There is more navigation than imagination, but then, the author is a small boat sailor and who can fault him for preferring accurate atlases to tall tales?

This book is a quaint text that is very interesting. I find the discussion of imaginary lands in the Atlantic to be very fun to read about. The imaginary lands that never really existed were a symptom of something greater within the human condition: our yearning for a better place than we where are currently.Of course, most of the lands that he discusses were just secondary discoveries of places we had already been too, and/or aspects of them got misreported, or facts about them garbled. Frisland was probably just a misreported encounter with Iceland by somebody who wasn't aware or Iceland's existence, or thought he was nowhere near Iceland for whatever reason. None of these would be out of the question, since things like accurate measurement of ones Longitude laid in the future and illiteracy was very rampant until relatively recent times. To use a quote that Donald Johnson uses, "The power of wish and the power of words are chief gods in the world of fable" - C. B. Firestone. Meaning that sometimes people want to dream things because they want too. And if they decide to believe those thoughts... while, it might not be healthy for them, like other vices, in moderation is probably okay for them. Later generations, and most notably British, French and later American navel cartographers removed the mystery lands because they wanted to know where islands really were, like in case you really need to make land fall in an emergency. So, they cleaned up the nonexistent places from the old maps. Beliefs in these lands made people feel better about themselves for whatever reasons they might have had. Today people immerse themselves into less healthy systems at times. Was something lost? Not really. We just moved our inherent yearning to other places... many have moved their thoughts to the stars and thoughts of other planets. Some yearning of that nature can be healthy, but it can be carried to extremes. I liked this book because it placed some of this kind of thinking into a historical context.

This book is really worth checking out. Donald Johnson takes us exploring some of the cooler little nooks and crannies of history, and we walk away greatly enriched. These are the kinds of tales that would make fantastic campfire-side telling. One of my favorites is the tale of "Frisland". If you do an online search for the phrase "Westford Knight" on Altavista.com, Hotbot.com, Yahoo.co, or whatever search engine you prefer, you will find a re-telling of the legend with which this island is associated. There is a book by Frederick Pohl, the respected science fiction author, called "Prince Henry Sinclair: His Expedition to the New World in 1398", which tells this story in more detail. The town Westford, MA actually has an old carving on a rock by the side of the highway that looks like a knight, and the town government has allowed a plaque to be put up next to it, telling the story of how Sinclair and his knights voyaged to Newfoundland, and later may have made their way to Massachusetts. Who knows if it's really true, but the carving COULD be a knight.And that's just one of the stories. There are seven here, and each one is enthralling. Absolutely worth it.

There are numerous islands which have appeared on maps of the Atlantic Ocean which then disappeared when later maps were published. This delightful book tells the stories of some of these islands. These island discussed in this book are:1.The Isle Of Demons, upon which Marguerite de la Roche spent over two years before being rescued. 2.Frisland, a large island with a king and numerous towns, sometimes south of Iceland, sometimes south of Greenland, sometimes in between. 3.Buss Island, sometimes small, sometimes large, east or west of Frisland. 4.Antillia, the Isle of Seven Cities, just West of Spain. 5.Hy-Brazil, circular with a river through it, just West of Ireland. There are two chapters regarding two religious stories which were related to islands. One of them is the voyage of Saint Brendan, a story which inspired some to identify the islands as locations of miraculous occurrences.Part history, part fairy tale, it is very entertaining reading of islands which, in fact, never even existed but were listed on maps for hundreds of years.

Until the problem of longitude was worked out in the 1700s, sailors and cartographers had great difficulty affixing exact locations of land masses. Islands were particularly elusive, and many of them had a habit of wandering around in the ocean! Occasionally, someone would bump into an island; think a new discovery was made; give it a name; and then spread the news to mapmakers. Some islands got discovered and named several times. Other islands were imagined or invented. Imagine the confusion of a poor navigator trying to figure out where he was if he was relying on a map drawn from hearsay. Phantom Islands of the Atlantic is filled with quaint maps and illustrations. Mr. Johnson's narrative is breezy and entertaining yet well-researched and informative. This book is a delight!