MYSTERIOUS ISLANDS

Waipa Post, Volume 42, Issue 3303, 30 May 1931, Page 2

MYSTERIOUS ISLANDS

NAVIGATORS' TRIALS

Admiralty sailing directions, which are the navigator's bible, record some extraordinary vagaries of supposedly solid land. Remarking that these official records are in places more extraordinary than fiction, Mr Lawrence G. Green has collected a few examples in the " Empire Review " for March. One statement runs that on June 1, U. 920, a mud island, 150 ft. long by 30ft. wide and 12ft. above high-water mark, suddenly made its appearance in Walvis Bay, on the African coast. Three months later the island disappeared, but twice since it has visited the surface for brief periods. On these occasions millions of dead fish were thrown up on the South-West African coast, and even a few dead whales were found. Volcanic creations of this kind have been recorded in almost all the seas of the world. Close to Trinidad, on the Venezuela coast, an island was born one day and was promptly proclaimed British territory by the.'residents of Trinidad. Two days later it sank, and the only record of its existence remains the mark of its locality on the charts. Many years ago at Port Royal, Jamaica, a whole town sank into the sea. One of the causes of mistakes in official charts has been the reporting of ice-islands for solid ground. Some of the ice-islands have been 20 to 30 miles long, and hundreds of feet in height, and strewn with rock and earth from the Antarctic continent. An emigrant ship, the Guiding Star, sighted a hoop-shaped ice-island 60 miles long, and was trapped in its bay. The wind failed, and it drifted on to the ice, and was lost with all hands. In 1851 the brig Renovation sighted an ice-island with two threemasted ships high and dry upon it. The identity of these ships was never discovered.

The problem of the Avocet rock in the Red Sea was one which cost two ships valued at many thousands of pounds before it was solved by H.M.S. Flying Fish. The Avocet was first to strike and sink on an unchartered rock in the locality indicated, and the story of the captain of the Avocet was disbelieved. Shortly afterwards the Teddington rammed the same rock and sank. The Admiralty then woke up. After hot weeks of weary dragging with wires the rock was found. It proved to be a small patch of coral, reaching to within 15ft. of the surface and rising abruptly from a depth of 180 ft. Falcon Island, in the South Pacific, has been a constant source of irritation to shipmasters and chartmakers since it was first observed, in 1885. The cliffs of the island were then 150 ft. high, and it was placed on the map. Then it went down, and stayed down for several years; then one day it appeared, piping hot, with a volcano in eruption. In 1900 it was only 6ft. above high-water mark. In 1927 it was again examined. It had increased in size and height, and a small bush had taken root. Grahane's Island, in the Mediterranean, near Sicily, some years ago made an unexpected appearance. It was examined and chartered by the Admiralty; but no sooner had the new charts been put into circulation than the island dropped back to the sea bed. In 1860 an American ship, Levant, was directed to find a low-lying atoll that had been sighted by a whaler. Its position and appearance were accurately described. Wether the Levant made the island or not will never be known, for neither ship nor island has been heard of since.