Legendary Islands of the Atlantic: A Study of Medieval Geography

We cannot tell at what early era the men of the eastern Mediterranean first ventured through the Strait of Gibraltar out on the open ocean, nor even when they first allowed their fancies free rein to follow the same path and picture islands in the great western mystery. Probably both events came about not long after these men developed enough proficiency in navigation to reach the western limit of the Mediterranean. We are equally in lack of positive knowledge as to what seafaring nation led the way.

The weight of authority favors the Phoenicians, but there are some indications in the more archaic of the Greek myths that the Hellenic or pre-Hellenic people of the Minoan period were promptly in the field. These bequests of an olden time are most efficiently exploited, in the matter-of-fact and very credulous “Historical Library” of Diodorus Siculus, about the time of Julius Caesar, who feels himself fully equipped with information as to the far-ranging campaigns of Hercules, Perseus, and other worthies. His identifications of tribes, persons, and places find an echo which may be called modern in Hakluyt’s map of 1587, illustrating Peter Martyr, which shows the Cape Verde Islands as Hesperides and Gorgades vel Medusiae. But this, though curious, is, of course, irrelevant as corroboration. Diodorus himself was a long way from his material in point of time, but from him we may at least possibly catch some glimmer of the origin of the mythical narratives, some refraction of the events that suggested them.

Small coasting, and incidentally sea-ranging, vessels must be of great antiquity, for the record of great ships capable of carrying hundreds of men and prolonging their voyages for years extends very far back indeed. We may recall the Scriptural item incidentally given of the fleets of Hiram, King of Tyre, and Solomon, King of Israel: “For the king had at sea a navy of Tharshish with the navy of Hiram: once in three years came the navy of Tharshish, bringing gold, and silver, ivory, and apes, and peacocks.” Tharshish is generally understood to have been Tartessus by the Guadalquivir beyond the western end of the Mediterranean. The elements of these exotic cargoes indicate, rather, traffic across the eastern seas. No doubt “ship of Tharshish” had come (like the term East Indiaman) to have a secondary meaning, distinguishing, wherever used, a special type of great vessel of ample capacity and equipment, named from the long voyage westward to Spain, in which it was first conspicuously engaged. But this would carry back we know not how many centuries the era of huge ships sailing from Phoenicia toward the Atlantic and seemingly able to go anywhere; with the certainty that lesser craft had long anticipated them on the nearer laps of the journey at least.

Corroboration is found in the utterances of a Chinese observer, later in date but apparently dealing with a continuing size and condition. “There is a great sea [the Mediterranean], and to the west of this sea there are countless countries, but Mu-lan-p’i [Mediterranean Spain] is the one country which is visited by the big ships.... Putting to sea from T’o-pan-ti [the Suez of today] ... after sailing due west for full an hundred days, one reaches this country. A single one of these (big) ships of theirs carries several thousand men, and on board they have stores of wine and provisions, as well as weaving looms. If one speaks of big ships, there are none so big at those of Mu-lan-p’i.”


This statement is credited to only a hundred years before Marco Polo. One naturally suspects some exaggeration. But a parallel account, nearly as expansive and very circumstantial, is given in the same work concerning giant vessels sailing in the opposite direction some six hundred years earlier. It begins: “The ships that sail the Southern Sea and south of it are like houses. When their sails are spread they are like great clouds in the sky.” Professor Holmes, drawing attention to these passages (which he quotes), very justly observes, “who shall say that the mastery of the sea known to have been attained in the Orient 500 A. D. had not been achieved long prior to that date?”