I have always found great pleasure in the fact that, among my ancestors, there was something of a tradition of map-making and engraving. This was the profession of two of my great-great-uncles in the nineteenth century, James and George, and my great-grandfather, Arthur, continued the family tradition well into the twentieth century. I have a number of examples of their work, but maps are ephemeral things: the natural and man-made world changes, and new maps quickly supersede the old – after all, do any of us keep road maps from ten years ago? OK, we all have GPS these days, anyway, but my point is simply that of a personal frustration that more maps by the various Wellands don’t survive – I have a large framed version of the splendidly named “Welland’s New Plan of London,” but it’s a copy that my father obtained from the British Library and I’ve never been able to find an original.
This cartographic ephemerality is particularly vivid in nautical charts, and I was struck by this when I was discovering the dynamics of Sable Island in the course of writing the book. Sable Island, one of the world’s most extraordinary and dangerous islands, emerges from the North Atlantic 160 kilometers offshore from Nova Scotia, and originates from the constant churning of and re-working of glacial sediments:
Sable Island is long and thin, around 40 kilometers from tip to tip (although measurements vary) and just over a kilometer across at its widest point. It lies roughly east-west, its crescent shape looking like a thin-lipped smile in the middle of the ocean. But the smile is deceiving: the island is simply the tip of a vast iceberg of sand, the much, much larger Sable Island Bank. Just beneath the ocean’s surface is a rolling topography of moving sand stretching up to 14 kilometers north to south and perhaps 30 kilometers east to west. The island lies at the meeting point of three major ocean currents, the Labrador current moving southward, the St. Lawrence current moving eastward, and the Gulf Stream on its way north. This interaction causes the waters of the Atlantic to swirl in a great counterclockwise pirouette around the island; but bottom currents, controlled by the tides, swirl clockwise. The result is a complex of ridges and valleys of sand running roughly northeast to southwest. This is a shape-shifting topography, the ridges migrating 50 meters every year, and changing rapidly during the frequent storms. Nautical charts are barely worth the paper they are printed on.
So it’s that last statement that is really my theme here (and a contributing factor to Sable Island’s candidacy as a “graveyard of the Atlantic",” although there are others). The one example of my Great-Grandfather’s nautical charts that I have is of an estuary on the east coast of England, just north of that of the Thames – a portion is shown at the head of this post (north to the right). I have to admit that I relish some of the names - “Foulness Sand,” “Buxey Sand,” “Dengie Flat” (separated from the “Ray Sand” by the “Hoo Outfall”); “Bachelor Spit” lies next to “Swire Hole.” The chart probably dates from around 1910 (the magnetic declination shown is 1907). Estuaries are ever-changing landscapes in the constant battle between rivers, tides, and currents, and I can’t help but wonder how the shifting sands have changed this landscape in a hundred years. I found an online source of modern charts (emphatically annotated as not for navigation), a part of which, corresponding to my great-granddad’s, looks like this:
It’s a delight to see that all the names are still there, but, even allowing for the lower level of modern detail, close examination reveals changes to the underwater landscape: the Buxey Sand seems to have grown, filling in “The Hole” at its western end, and the shape of the coast around Colne Point has changed significantly, largely, it would seem, as a result of human activity. Inspection of historic Google Earth images reveals that a new sandbar has appeared off Mersey Island, and, to my pleasure since I had recently written about such things, a beautiful hooked spit has been growing near the mouth of the River Colne:
The shape-shifting nature of a minor estuary on England’s east coast brings me on to greater things: for well over a year now, a new bit of France has endured in the mouth of the estuary, the largest in Europe, of the mighty Gironde River (mighty both in its sediment transport capacity and in its vital role in producing the wines of Bordeaux). The Phare de Cordouan is the oldest lighthouse in France, completed in 1611, and continues to serve a vital role, for the area around is a treacherous terrain of rocky outcrops and sandbanks situated right in the entrance to the estuary:
The lighthouse has been described, with typical French understatement, as the “Versailles of the sea,” “the king of lighthouses,” “lighthouse of the king,” and the eighth wonder of the world. In early 2009, after an Atlantic storm (“Klaus”) had abated, an entirely new island had appeared six nautical miles from the coastal town of Royan (celebrated as the place where President Sarkozy built sandcastles as a child), and close to the lighthouse. It had an area of around 4 hectares (“two-and-a-half football pitches” at high tide, much more at low tide – this is an approximate measure, so which particular brand of football hardly matters). The “island with no name” or "L'île Mystérieuse" quickly became an ecological celebrity and a destination. Colonisation by flora and fauna took place rapidly, but, to the consternation of the local authorities, this “fragile ecosystem” was threatened by the influx of boatloads of partiers. Unfortunately, it was also threatened by the same forces of nature that created it – early this year, the season’s great storm (variously named “Cynthia” or “Xanthia,” either one of which sounds oddly benign for a tempest) cut the island in half and wiped out the ecosystem. But "L'île Mystérieuse" survived.
The tensions between the scientific and romantic communities on the one hand, and the party-loving hordes on the other (“terfeurs,” ravers, have recently been active on the island), continue. A French online news site recently described a visit to the island that has also been referred to as “Tahiti” in reverential ways: “ une véritable énigme," “un mirage paradisiaque,” and “des allures de mystérieux mirage marin” hardly need translation; but then we find that “On se prend à rêver un instant que l’empreinte de son pied dans le sable mouillé est le premier du genre humain à cet endroit précis” – “one can dream for an instant that one’s footprint in the wet sand is the first of humankind in this exact place.” I can’t help but be reminded of the quintessentially French question: “this is all very well in practice, but how does it work in theory?”
The state has yet to recognise the island, either with a name, or on a chart. I have examined both Google Earth and the French “Geoportail” site of aerial photographs and, of course, the imagery has not caught up with recent events. But what these sources do show is the routine sedimentary turmoil of such a dynamic setting; I’m not sure of the exact dates of the two images below, but the dramatic differences are immediately apparent (the lighthouse is at the end of the linear causeway, bottom centre left):
How to deal with "L'île Mystérieuse" is the subject of an ongoing debate (see recent coverage in the UK press). Whether the island or the debate will endure longer remains to be seen – it is, after all, a sandbank, and the enthusiasm for conservation has to be tempered by the fickleness of nature. But then again, this is the first natural addition to French territory in many centuries, indeed, as reports note, since loss of the fabled island of Armotte just to the north of the Gironde estuary, a Gallic Atlantis where pagan depravity led to its destruction in an “appalling cataclysm.” Those reports raise the possibility that "L'île Mystérieuse" will eventually be included in the geography books. And nautical charts? Perhaps yes, but, as Great-Grandfather Welland might have asked, for how many editions?
[photo of the island and the lighthouse from the article in the Independent]
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