3 Stars
Map says it's there; where did it go?
There are several sections to this book breaking down the islands into categories: Islands of Life and Death (mythic representations of eden/heaven), Setting Out, The Age of Exploration--before we solved the problem of an accurate timepiece accurate latitude measurements were impossible and historical maps are littered with islands that have never been seen again. In 1875, the British Royal Navy removed 123 islands from its admiralty maps after an extensive remapping endeavor. Sunken Lands addresses the obvious, lands that were reclaimed by the ocean from real ones off Iceland and Greenland to the fictional Atlantis created by Plato which amazingly transcended its purpose. Fraudulent Islands were great and made me smile. A whole slew of imaginary islands named after investors or rich men that explorers were hoping would funds future ventures. But I guess the most surprising section was Recent Undiscoveries. You'd think with all the technology we have that there wouldn't be any left to disprove-au contraire. I somehow managed to miss the post Y2K brouhaha between Mexico and the US over the mysterious island Bermeja in the Gulf of Mexico and the implications in treaties and oil drilling.
This isn't as in-depth as I hoped, but realistically, the lack of material is what made these islands exist for so long. Tallack did a good job either outright debunking the island or presenting enough circumstantial information to create a reasonable cogent argument for what might have been responsible for its inclusion on maps. A fun reference for the curious and filled with some nice illustrations throughout, reflected of those presented on the cover.
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