256 
CAPTAIN SMYTH ON AN ERROR RESPECTING 
“ H. M. Ship Wassanaer, 11th of December 1800, p. m. The island of 
Pantellaria S.W. by W. 9 or 10 leagues, saw a reef of rocks S.S.E., 
distant 3 or 4 miles, extending N.N.W. and S.S.E., about one mile in 
length. Hauled up S. by W., to clear them. Saw something on the 
reef like a ship’s mast. Bearings by compass.” — 
I examined the spot with a rigorous strictness, (see Plate VII.) ; and from 
the various traverses which I made in every direction, with the lead going by 
night and by day, I feel prepared to assert that, no reef of the nature described 
by Captain Larmour in 1800, and no shoal of four fathoms water, could have 
existed in 1814. How the said “four fathoms” crept into our charts, is best 
known to the ship-chandlers who too long purveyed to the scientific wants of 
seamen ; but from the absence of positive testimony, from the careful search 
made by order of Lord Keith, from my own several cruizes, and from the ma- 
terial fact of its being in the high road which is annually beaten by hundreds 
of ships, it is not presuming greatly to say, that neither the one nor the other 
had any existence. 
Nor is the assigned place “ within a mile” of the position of the volcanic 
islet, though it may accidentally have been so marked upon the “ sea-cards ;” 
for it should be remembered that the true site even of the principal headlands 
around was not then decided. According to the minute just quoted, corrected 
for magnetic variation, Larmour’s supposed reef is no less than sixteen miles 
W. by N. from it, on a part of the sub-aqueous plateau (which I named Ad- 
venture Bank) uniting Sicily to Africa by a succession of ridges, — about a 
spot where I found from 40 to 50 fathoms of water. Graham’s Isle, however, 
is not upon this bank ; it arose between it and a knoll some miles to the east- 
ward, which, from a shell brought up by the arming, I called Nerita ; and, if 
the observations which determine the latitude and longitude of the stranger 
as in 37° 08' 25" N. and 12° 43' 50" E. be correct, it must have been elevated 
through more than a hundred fathoms of water. 
In thus doubting the actual existence of the Larmour Shoal, it is not my 
intention to dispute the appearance and disappearance of natural phenomena ; 
nor that stupendous alterations may occur by the subsidence and uplifting of 
strata, — because an obstinate scepticism would be absurd, especially in a part 
of the globe where, to use a well-expressed Italian metaphor, the whole ground 
