Thompson Island (South Atlantic)


Thompson Island was a phantom island in the South Atlantic. According to the Global Volcanism Program, it was thought to be about north-northeast of Bouvet Island, a small Norwegian dependency between South Africa and Antarctica.

History

The island was first reported and named by whaling ship captain George Norris in 1825, supposedly the same day as sighting and landing on Bouvet Island, erroneously thinking the island to be undiscovered and naming it Liverpool Island. The last reported sighting was in 1893. When, however, the German survey ship Valdivia fixed the position of Bouvet in 1898, it then looked for Thompson, but did not find it. If Thompson ever existed, it is probable that it disappeared in a volcanic eruption sometime in the 1890s, though in 1997 it was reported that the sea depth at the supposed location is greater than, rendering the existence of a submarine volcano all but impossible.
Thompson Island continued to appear on maps published as late as 1943.

In fiction