LOST ISLANDS

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 106, 5 April 1926, Page 8

LOST ISLANDS

MYSTERY OF THE SEA. NEW ISLAND OVERNIGHT. Never again, as long as the world endures, will a navigator be able to wipe a continent off the map (writes T. Dunbabin in the Sydney Sun). To us Cook’s greatest feat was that he put the east coast of Australia on the map; to himself, his crowning achievement was that by sailing along it he showed that tho continent, filling a great part of tho southern hemisphere, which had figured on the map of the world for centuries, did not exist. And never can another navigator emulate Columbus, who gave to Spain that “other world” of which his epitaph speaks. In the frozen regions of the north over which Wilkins is to fly there is room for the discovery of new islands, but not of another continent.

And scattered here and there, up and down tho map of the world, are a number of features which will have to be removed as knowledge grows. It is not always a matter of correcting mistakes. With almost incredible slowness for the most part, but sometimes -with dramatic swiftness, the face of the earth is changing. In the tropics coral reefs are being built up into islands; everywhere wind and rain and wave are refashioning natural features. When the volcanic forces pent up beneath the earth’s crust stir islands may vanish or new ones appear overnight. And some of the islands that figure on our maps and charts are the result of errors. A huge iceberg looming through the mist may be marked down as an island or a bank of cloud may be mistaken for land.

VANISHING THOMPSON ISLAND,

Far out in the stormy seas to the south-west of the Capo of Good Hope is Bouvet Island, first sighted in 1730 by tho French captain whose name it bears. In 1774 Cook searched in vain for it, but Lindsay, a sealer, sighted it in 1808. In 1825 Captain ■ Norris examined Bouvet Island, and he also sighted, 45 miles to the north-east, a small island, which he named Thompson Island.

Ho describes this island as “nothing less than a complete cinder.” Norris sent his boats round the island in search of seals. The boatmen landed in a little cove on the south-west side of the island, where they were caught by bad weather and compelled to remain for six days. Like Cook, Ross missed Bouvet Island in 1843. In 1893 Captain Fuller, of the U.S.A, sealer Francis Allen, is said to have sighted Thompson Island. Yet when the. German surveying ship Valdivia visited Bouvet Island in 1898 it could find no.other island.

Now the captain of another German survey ship, the Meteor, states that after an exhaustive searen, he is satisfied that Thompson Island does not exist. One is tempted to conclude that, like Royal Company Island, Emerald Island and other supposed islands in the southern seas, it never did exist, but was built out of ice, fog or cloud. As against that, there is the statement that Norris’s men actually landed on it. > PHANTOM SOUTHERN LANDS. One of the phantom islands of the southern seas is Royal Company Island, which a Spanish vessel reported having seen in 1776 about 500 miles to the south-west of Tasmania. Captain Davis, now Federal Director of Navigation, searched for it in the Aurora in 1912, but found only deep sea. Farther to the south-east is Emerald Island, reported by a sealer in 1821. It, too, has since eluded search. So has Nimrod Island, sighted by a sealer, the Nimrod, in 1828. In 1909 Captain Davis hunted for it in another Nimrod, but in vain. More puzzling is the case of Dougherty Island, away to the west of Bouvet Island. American sealers are supposed to have taken at least one cargo of sealskins from it about 1800. In 1841 Captain Dougherty re-discov-ered it in a whaler. Ho stated that he stood to within 400 yards of it. In 1859 Captain Keats reported an island in the same latitude, but 34 miles farther east. Again, in 1866, the barque Cingalee was close to the island for three days. Yet in 1904 Captain Scott found 2318 fathoms of watei where the island should have been, and neither Captain Davis,\ in 1909, nor the Carnegie, in 1915, could find any trace of land. “THE BEEHIVES.” Of the sudden appearance of new islands there are many instances. On March 2, 1923, the Japanese vessel Wakasa Maru saw a submarine volcano in eruption off the coast of Annam in about 50 fathoms of water. Captain Dickson, of H.M.S. visited the spot on March 8, and found an island 500 feet long and from 80 to 100 feet high. In November, 1904, the inhabitants of two of Sulphur Island,, in the Borins, 700 miles south-east of Japan, were much alarmed by loud rumblings. Later an island 2J miles in circumference and 480 feet high rose from tho sea away to the east. Ten men went over in a canoe, landed on the island, in the middle of which was a boiling lake, and placed on tho highest point a flag, on which was inscribed: “New place, Great Japan; many Banzais.” In 1870 a Russian navigator discovered a new island, now called Castle Rock, near Bogoslof Island off tho coast of Alaska. In 1870 anothor island rose from tho sea, and in 1883 Fire Island came up four miles away. Perry Island followed in 1906. Nearer to Australia are the two rocky islets, called the Beehives, over 50 feet high, and covered with bushes, which appeared overnight in the harbour of Rabaul (New Britain), according to native tradition.