Henry Stommel (1920–1992)

Surveying the British admiralty charts, Stommel goes through the various islands that were included in earlier revisions only to be expunged in subsequent ones, because they turned out not to exist. Most were duplications of real islands, which got misplaced due to various navigational errors, some were fog banks or icebergs misidentified as islands, a few were apparently hoaxes, and one or two may actually have once existed only to disappear beneath the waves.

A delightful tour among cartographical mirages.… (meer)