South Pole
A purported island that appeared on maps but was later found not to exist.
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The South Pole, also known as the Geographic or Terrestrial South Pole, is the southernmost point on Earth, located where the planet’s axis of rotation meets its surface in the Southern Hemisphere. It lies antipodally to the North Pole and defines geodetic latitude 90° South. At this point, all directions point north, and all lines of longitude converge, meaning its longitude can be considered any value. No time zone is assigned, so any time may be used locally.
Along tight latitude circles, clockwise is east and counterclockwise is west, the opposite of the North Pole. The South Pole sits at the center of the Southern Hemisphere on the continent of Antarctica, atop a barren, windswept, icy plateau at an elevation of about 2,835 meters above sea level. The ice sheet covering the pole is roughly 3.2 kilometers thick and moves slowly, requiring the geographic marker to be repositioned several meters each year. Buildings at the site gradually become buried by snow that does not melt.
The United States Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, established in 1956, has been permanently staffed since then. A new marker is placed at the geographic pole annually, while a separate Ceremonial South Pole, marked by a metallic sphere on a barber pole and surrounded by flags of the original Antarctic Treaty signatory states, is set aside for photographs. The polar ice sheet drifts roughly 10 meters per year toward the Weddell Sea, shifting the station’s position relative to the true pole. Historic monuments near the pole include a tent erected by Roald Amundsen’s Norwegian expedition in December 1911, now buried under snow and ice, and an Argentine flagpole placed in December 1965 by the First Argentine Overland Polar Expedition.
Quick Facts
- Location
- Antarctica
- Coordinates
- 90° South
- Elevation
- 2,835 m (9,301 ft) above sea level
- Ice thickness
- approximately 2,700 m (8,900 ft)
- First reached
- 14 December 1911 by Roald Amundsen
- Station established
- 1956 (Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station)
Facts from the source article.
Origins and the Anatomy of Error
Phantom islands typically trace their origins to the age of early maritime exploration, when sailors charting unknown waters could easily mistake one thing for another. A floating iceberg, a bank of fog, a raft of volcanic pumice, or even a superior mirage over open water might all be logged as solid land. In some cases the error was deliberate: cartographers would plant invented features on their maps either to defraud buyers or to trap rival mapmakers who copied their work.
Other phantoms were simply misreadings of real geography. Pepys Island turned out to be a garbled identification of the Falkland Islands, while the Baja California Peninsula and New Zealand's Banks Peninsula were drawn as detached islands on early charts before surveyors confirmed they were attached to their respective continents. Isle Phelipeaux, a phantom duplicate of Isle Royale in Lake Superior, was so firmly embedded in cartographic tradition that it even served as a reference point for the border between the United States and what would become Canada, until later surveying proved it had never existed.
Notable Cases and Their Remarkable Longevity
Dougherty Island, first reported in 1841 by Captain Daniel Dougherty of the Irish whaler James Stewart, was supposedly confirmed by two other captains in 1860 and 1886, yet no such landmass ever existed. It nonetheless lingered on published charts as late as 1934.
Emerald Island, named for the British sealing vessel that sighted it in December 1821, was searched for by the 1840 United States Exploring Expedition with no success, and a 1909 expedition aboard the Nimrod also turned up nothing—yet the island still appeared in an American Express desk calendar atlas in 1987. Sandy Island, placed in the Coral Sea between the Chesterfield Islands and Nereus Reef, was 'undiscovered' in the 1970s but continued to appear in digital mapping datasets well into the 21st century, with its non-existence re-confirmed in 2012. The Nimrod Islands, first reported in 1828, and the Royal Company's Islands, first heard of before 1840, similarly vanished from reality without ever being verified by any subsequent voyage.
The Cartographic Inertia That Keeps Ghosts Afloat
What makes phantom islands remarkable is not their initial appearance but their extraordinary endurance on charts. A single unverified sighting could anchor a feature to maps for generations, even centuries. The Royal Company's Islands, whose original report cannot even be traced, appeared on many old charts at various coordinates southwest of Tasmania. Sandy Island survived from the late 19th century through its 1970s 'undiscovery' and into 21st-century digital databases.
Emerald Island's ghost persisted into a 1987 publication. This persistence reveals how cartographic authority operates: once a feature is printed, it gains a kind of institutional credibility that resists correction. The distinction between phantom islands and lost lands is also crucial—phantom islands are claimed to exist in the present but never did, whereas lost lands are believed to have once existed before being destroyed or swallowed by the sea.
Literary Echoes and the Mythic Dimension
The phantom island phenomenon has left a lasting mark on literature and popular imagination. Herman Melville wove the concept into Moby-Dick, where the narrator reflects on how a dead whale's floating carcass, glimpsed from a distance by a passing vessel, gets logged as 'shoals, rocks, and breakers' and causes ships to avoid the area for years.
This literary nod captures the very mechanism by which phantom islands are born: a distant, ambiguous observation recorded in a ship's log and then propagated through subsequent charts. The Isle of Demons near Newfoundland, possibly rooted in local legends of a haunted island, and the far-northern Thule reported by the 4th-century BC Greek explorer Pytheas—whose location was lost and has been variously identified as Shetland, Iceland, Scandinavia, or nothing at all—show how myth and geography intertwine. Hy-Brasil, depicted west of Ireland, represents the purely fanciful end of the spectrum.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the South Pole?
It is the exact point on Earth where the planet's rotational axis meets the surface in the southern hemisphere, marking the southernmost coordinate possible. It sits on the Antarctic continent at 90° South latitude.
Who was the first person to reach the South Pole?
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and his small team arrived on December 14, 1911, edging out Robert Falcon Scott's rival British party by roughly a month. That race to the bottom of the map remains one of the most celebrated rivalries in polar history.
What is the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station?
It is a United States research base erected at the geographic South Pole in 1956 and has been continuously staffed by scientists and support crews ever since. The facility sits at an elevation of about 2,835 meters (9,301 feet) above sea level on the Antarctic ice sheet.
How thick is the ice beneath the South Pole?
The ice sheet under the geographic South Pole is roughly 2,700 meters (around 8,900 feet) thick, so the actual bedrock floor lies far below the surface where the station and flag are planted.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: South Pole (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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