A scarce map, published in 1732 to accompany the long-delayed account of James Hall’s 1612 Greenland expedition, preserving a strikingly archaic vision of the North Atlantic, complete with phantom island and a misplaced Frobisher Strait.

The map accompanied the printed account of an all-but-unknown English mariner, John Gatonbe, from Hull, who served as a quartermaster on the ship Patience, which sailed with James Hall’s expedition to the west coast of Greenland in April-September 1612. Gatonbe is believed to have compiled the account of the voyage in about 1615, but it did not appear in print until much later, when it was published as “A Voyage into the North-West Passage, Undertaken in the Year 1612” in the 1732 edition of A Collection of Voyages and Travels (London: John Walthoe et al).[1] Most or all of the place names shown on the map along the south and west coast of Greenland also appear in Gatonbe’s text.

Phantom islands and a misplaced strait
The map features a number of archaic errors, suggesting that it may well have been based on a map accompanying Gatonbe’s original manuscript, rather than being a later edition by the editors.

Greenland is depicted with “S Martin Frobisher’s Streights” almost dividing the island in two. This error dates back to the late 16^th century: In 1576 Martin Frobisher discovered what is now known as Frobisher Bay, on the southeast coast of Baffin Island. Somehow early mapmakers transformed it into a strait and shifted it to southern Greenland, an error followed by some well into the 18^th century, as here. Likewise, the “Silver mine supposed” shown on the map along the northwest coast of Greenland might also be a holdover from Frobisher, who returned from his voyage with a hull full of ore (“black earth”) thought to contain gold and silver, but which after assay provided worthless.

The map also features at least two imaginary islands: Busjus to the south of Iceland, and “Friesland” just off the “Frobisher’s Streights.” The latter derives from the mythical 1380s voyage of the Zeno brothers. In 1558 the Venetian Nicolo Zeno the Younger published an account of an ancestor’s travels (De i Commentari del Viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno) with a supplement detailing the 1380s voyage of two other ancestors in the North Atlantic. It would have transferred credit for “discovery” of the New World from Columbus to the Venetians but is now generally believed to be a fabrication. The work was illustrated by the so-called “Zeno map”, depicting the North Atlantic dotted by a number of imaginary islands, including Friesland to the south of Iceland.

References
Maps of Iceland: The Schulte Collection, #193. C.C.A. Gosch (editor), Danish Arctic expeditions, 1605 to 1620 (Hakluyt Society, Series 1, Nos. 96-97, 1897), pp. cxi-cxiii and 161-162. Sigurðsson, Kortasaga Íslands (Reykjavik: Bókaútgáfa Menningarsjóðs og Þjóðvinafélagsins, 1981 & 1978), vol. 2, p. 95.

[1] See the 1732 edition of the Travels, vol. VI, p. [241]-256. This multi-volume English collection of travel accounts is today colloquially known as “Churchill’s Collection of Travels”, after the original publishers, the brothers Awnsham and John Churchill). The title of the piece is misleading: Hall’s expedition explored Greenland and did not head further west in search of the Passage.