Phantom Islands
Wikipedia lists 37 phantom islands. These are islands that are believed to exist and appear on maps for a period of time (sometimes centuries), and then are removed after they are proven not to exist (or the general population stops believing that they exist).
This is the story of a mysterious island. A busse is a small ship with three masts. In 1578 one was sailing near Greenland, an icy country near the North Pole. There was a bad storm and the busse was being tossed about in the waves. The captain decided to ride out the storm in the shelter of a nearby island.
The next morning when the captain looked at his map, he was surprised to find that the island was not marked on it.
Some of the crew rowed across and found that the island was quite bare. There were no plants of any kind. The only things living there were seabirds. The captain and his crew named the island Busse Island after their ship.
In 1609 Henry Hudson in his ship the Discoverie, was on his way to Greenland. He saw Busse Island and sailed towards it. Suddenly, to his amazement, the island sank beneath the waves and disappeared.
After hearing about this, people began to refer to Busse Island as "mystery island". Many sailors went looking for it, but nobody found it until 1635 when Captain Fox sailed past it. He reported that it was a large island with ice around part of it and that it looked strange.
In 1671 Captain Shepherd went fishing in the bay at Busse Island. He also made a map of it and after this, new maps had the island marked on them. But in 1745 somebody else drew a map and on this map the shape of Busse Island was quite different.
More and more people became interested in the island. Lots of sailors visited it and drew maps. The strange thing was - every map was different. Could it be that Busse Island kept changing its shape?
In 1775 some more sailors decided to visit the strange island and map it. But they were just too late. As they sailed towards it, the island began to move. The captain and crew watched in amazement as Busse Island sank into the sea. Not even a rock was left to show where it had been.
Since then, many people have gone looking for the mysterious island, but it has never been seen again. Perhaps it was only an illusion, something that sailors only "thought" they saw.
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