Sandy Island
GeographyComments
That happened with several phantom islands in the South Atlantic. Many were just misidentified icebergs or floating debris that stayed on official charts for decades.
did the mapping actually last a century or was it just a few sporadic entries.
Why focus on the timeline? The real story is that we trusted satellite imagery over actual eyes for years. Isn't that the ultimate irony?
This is how land surveys go in my office. People trust a map from 1920 and then we find out the property line is actually a creek that dried up fifty years ago.
What if the error was actually a useful safeguard? A phantom island might force sailors to exercise more caution in a region known for treacherous currents.
I wonder if the island was actually a pumice raft from an underwater volcano... would that show up as a landmass on early charts?