Saturday 25 April 2020

the admiralty regrets to inform

Whilst on a mission to circumnavigate the globe passing from the South Atlantic to the South Pacific in December 1683, surveyor William Ambrosia Cowle, whom significantly charted the Galรกpagos, aboard the gunship Bachelor’s Delight, spied an island north of the Falklands, which he named Pepys Island, in honour of the diarist and also Parliamentary and Financial Secretary to the Admiralty. Although describing the avian residents, geographical features and quality of its harbour and anchorage in great detail, Pepys Island never again materialised, for centuries evading rediscovery, and was ultimately declared a phantom island.