Welcome to Cosmographia. This post is part of our Terra Phantasma series, where we venture in search of the mysterious ‘phantom lands’ that have appeared on maps through the ages. For the full map of Cosmographia posts, see here.
A demon hand sometimes uprose from the islet and plucked away men and even whole boats, which, when once grasped, usually by night, were never seen again, but perished helplessly.
— T.W. Higginson, Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic (1899)
To medieval Europe, the Atlantic Ocean seemed a vast and unfathomable expanse. To sail too far out west was to risk death — not because they believed the world flat,1 but because they thought there was nothing out there at all. Not knowing of the existence of the Americas, they reasoned (correctly) that there was no way to sail all the way to China — or as they called it, Cathay — without a resupply en route.
However, when Portuguese navigators began opening up trade routes along the western edge of Africa, a few bold men began tentatively venturing out into deeper waters. The Azores were discovered in 1427, and the Castilian conquest of the Canary Islands had begun not long before. But some of these sailors brought back more than just traded goods — they returned with ominous stories. There be strange islands out there, they said, islands inhabited by evil spirits.