One of a few books I got at Christmas after reading The Undiscovered Islands last spring, this one is more grounded in facts. Rather than including islands from antiquity that were rumored to house strange beasts, Stommel focuses on islands that were described since the Age of Imperialism kicked off, that were eventually removed from major nautical charts.
It's a drier read, as Stommel talks quite a bit about the difficulties in determining longitude, and how those errors cause a lot of confusion and mislabeling of the same island multiple times. So, you know, not exactly gripping reading at times. On the other hand, he also discusses some of the reasons people thought they found islands when they didn't. Only a few of them are related to people trying to make a name for themselves and banking on their fraudulent claims!
But sometimes icebergs can appear very different at a distance, depending on the light. Some of the theorized islands were based on some reporting they saw "discolored water", which I'm assuming means water with sediment in it, which would have to come from land. There's reefs and shoals that can produce unusual water patterns. Most interesting was one Stommel heard from a friend of his, where he was convinced one night they were headed right for an island, and it turned out to be a nighttime rain squall. The clouds and the rain in extremely dim light looked like cliffs apparently. That was pretty cool.
There's several general maps, some just showing where islands supposedly were in relation to other, actual islands. Some of them are old ship's logs showing the courses a captain believed his crew to be taking while they searched. You can tell he really did his research, although it's still a short book, about 150 pages.
'In the spring of the year 1783 a volcanic island was thrown up from the sea in the neighborhood of Iceland, and according to the Danish Captain Von Loewenorn, the crew that witnessed its birth thought at first that it was the end of the world, but since they heard no trumpet and the sun continued to shine, they decided Iceland itself had exploded.'
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