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Dave's Mythical Creatures and Places |
Atlantic Islands
Map by Giovanni Magini, circa 1597. Click on islands to go to pages.
Download PDF version of whole map (258kB)
For many of the early civilizations, such as the Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians, the world revolved around the Mediterranean Ocean, and the Atlantic Ocean was a complete unknown. Many believed that beyond the Straits of Gibraltar was a vast river that circled the earth. The Greek poet Avienus describes a journey by Himilco: "No breeze drives the ship forward, so dead is the sluggish wind of this idle sea. Himilco also adds that there is much seaweed among the waves, and that it often holds ships back like bushes. Nevertheless, he says that the sea has no great depth, and that the surface of the earth is barely covered by a little water. The monsters of the sea move continually hither and thither, and the wild beasts swim among the sluggish and slowly creeping ships." more about Himilco...
The Arabs called the Atlantic "The Sea of Gloom" or "The Sea of
Darkness." In the
11th century, geographer al-Biruni wrote: "No seafaring is done on this sea,
for the air is dark, the water is thick,
the navigable channels in confusion, and here there are many ways of
losing oneself." Some
Arabian geographers represented the Hand of Satan as rising from this sea, which
would grab and destroy the mariner's ships.
One of the first recorded journeys was by Pytheas of Massalia, who sailed to England in about 330 B.C. from his Greek colony in what is now Marseilles, France (although he probably traveled over land to the port of Corbilo and sailed from there.) He wrote about his voyage in a book called About the Ocean of which no copies exist, but he is quoted in other works. Pytheas visited Britain where tin was traded, and possibly Ireland, the Hebrides, the Orkneys, and Thule.
Early navigation of the Atlantic was extremely difficult for small sailing ships. The weather can be very rough, and sailors who relied on the sun and the stars to navigate might not be able to get a clear view of the sky for days. Although sailors could generally get their latitude (North/South position measured by the horizontal lines on the map) with reasonable accuracy, it was not until the late 1700's that a clock was designed that was able to measure time accurately enough to calculate longitude (East/West position measured by the vertical lines on the map.) Other factors also made early navigation difficult- a poor understanding of ocean currents, and the Sargasso Sea which is seaweed that can slow down small ships.
Exploration of the Northern Atlantic was even more difficult. Ice and slush could make travel slow and laborious. Pliny refers to this frozen ocean as one day's sail from Thule, sometimes called the Cronian Sea. Many maps of the 1500's referred to the area north of 70 degrees latitude as "Mare Congelatii" (the Frozen Sea.) In addition, compasses became less reliable, as the difference between magnetic north and true north became more distorted. In the story of Saint Brendan's travels, he encounters both a "Coagulated Sea" and a "Crystal Pillar" in the ocean.
