About 2,300 years ago Plato wrote of a great and populous island empire in the outer (Atlantic) ocean, which had warred against Athens more than 9,000 years before his time and been suddenly engulfed by a natural cataclysm. According to his statement of the case this prodigious phenomenon, with all the splendor of national achievement that shortly preceded it, had been quite forgotten by the Athenians; but the tradition was recorded in the sacred books of the priests of Sais at the head of the Nile delta and was related by these Egyptians to Solon of Athens when he visited them apparently somewhere near 550 B. C. Solon embodied it, or began to embody it, in a poem (all trace of which is lost) and also related it to Dropides, his friend. It is probably to be understood that he further communicated it to this friend in some written form, for we find Critias in a dialogue with Socrates represented by Plato as declaring: “My great-grandfather, Dropides, had the original writing, which is still in my possession.”12 If so, it has vanished.

Elements of Fact and Fancy in Plato’s Tale of Atlantis

It is evident that the Atlantis tale must be treated either as mainly historical, with presumably some distortions and exaggerations, or as fiction necessarily based in some measure (like all else of its kind) on living or antiquated facts. Certainly no one will go the length of accepting it as wholly true as it stands. But, even eliminating all reference to the god Poseidon and his plentiful demigod progeny, we are left with divers essential features which credulity can hardly swallow. Atlantis is too obviously an earlier and equally colossal Persia, western instead of eastern, overrunning the Mediterranean until checked by the intrepid stand of the great Athenian republic. The supreme authentic glory of Athens was the overthrow of Xerxes and his generals. Had this been otherwise we must believe that we should not have heard of the baffled invasion by Atlantis. Again, we are asked to accept Athens, contrary to all other information, as a dominant military state more than 9,500 years before Christ, when presumably its people, if existent, were exceedingly primitive and unformidable. Moreover, the sudden submergence of so vast a region as the imagined Atlantis would be an event without parallel in human annals, besides being pretty certain to leave marks on the rest of the world which could be recognized even now.

The hypothesis of fiction seems reasonably well established. We must remember that Plato did not habitually confine himself to bare facts. His favorite method of exposition was by reporting alleged dialogues between Socrates and various persons—dialogues which no one could have remembered accurately in their entirety. It is recognized that in arrangement, characters, and utterance he has contrived to convey his own theories and conceptions as well as those of his revered teacher and leader, so that it is often impossible to say whether we should credit certain views or statements mainly to Plato or to Socrates. Possessed by his meditations, he would even present as an instructive example and incitement a fancied picture of an elaborate system of social and political organization, chiefly the product of his own brain. He did this in the “Republic” and apparently had planned a larger partly parallel work of the kind in the triology of which the “Timaeus” and the fragmentary “Critias” are the first part and the unfinished second. A writer (Lewis Campbell) in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, article “Plato,” states the case very clearly.

Jowett takes substantially the same view in his introduction to the “Critias,” indicating surprise at the innocent, literal, matter-of-fact way in which the former existence and destruction of great Atlantis have generally been accepted as sober declarations of fact and accounted for in divers fashions accordingly. Nor is this estimate of the Atlantis tale as primarily a romance of enlightenment and uplifting a merely modern theory. Plutarch, in a passage quoted by Schuller, lays more stress on Plato’s tendency to adorn the subject, treating Atlantis as a delightful spot in some fair field unoccupied, than on ennobling imagination, and avers the described magnificence to be “such as no other story, fable, or poem ever had.”14 But this, whether wholly adequate or no, surely emphasizes the recognition of romance. Plutarch adds a word of regret that Plato began the “delightful” story late in life and died before the work was completed. The precise motive of the fiction is only of minor importance to our present inquiry. It seems hardly possible that the development of the composition in the remaining two parts of the trilogy could have given it a more authentic historical cast. As the matter stands Atlantis is rather succinctly reported in the “Timaeus,” more fully and with mythological and architectural adornments in the later “Critias” till it breaks off in the middle of a sentence; but the two accounts are consistent. It seems a clear case of evolution suddenly arrested but allowing us fairly to infer the character of the whole from the parts that remain.

If there were any corroboration of the tale, it would count on the historical side; but it seems to be agreed that Greek literature and art before Plato do not supply this in any unequivocal and reliable form. Certain hints or contributory items will be dealt with below, but they do not affect the character of the story as a whole nor tend to establish the reality of its main features.

We do not need to ascribe to Plato all the fancy and invention in the story. The romancing may have been done in part by the priests of Sais or by Solon or by Dropides or by Critias; or possibly all these may have contributed successive strata of fancy, crowned by Plato. Practically we have to treat the tale as beginning with him. Its circumstantiality and air of realism have sometimes been taken as credentials of accuracy; but they are not beyond the ordinary skill of a man of letters, and Plato was much more than equal to the task.

Significant Passages from the Tale

The Atlantis narrative has been so often translated and copied, at least as to its more significant parts, that one hesitates to quote again; but there are certain items to which attention should be drawn, and brief extracts are the best means of effecting this. The following passages are from the Smithsonian translation of Termier’s remarkable paper on Atlantis reproduced by that institution. It differs verbally from the translation by Dr. Jowett but not in the broader features. Of the two quotations the first is from the “Critias.” It is briefer than the other, though forming part of a more elaborate and extended account of the island. Taking his appointed part in the dialogue, Critias says:

Termier quotes also from the “Timaeus” dialogue (Critias is repeating the statement of the Egyptian priests):

We have said that all fiction has some root in reality. Even a myth is commonly an attempted explanation of some mysterious natural phenomenon or distorted narrative of obscure, nearly forgotten happenings. Intentional fiction, try as it may, cannot keep quite clear of facts. We turn, then, to those salient features of the above excerpts which may in a measure stand for real past events or puzzling conditions supposed to continue. Beside the prehistoric grandeur and triumph of Athens, already dealt with, these are to be noted: the Atlantean invasion of the Mediterranean; the vastness of the outer island which sent forth these armies; its submergence; and the alleged continued obstruction to navigation in that quarter.

Atlantean Invasion of the Mediterranean

There seem to have been some rumors afloat of very early hostilities between dwellers on the shores of the Mediterranean and those beyond the Pillars of Hercules. That geographical name bears witness to the supposed exertion of Greek dominant power at the very gateway of the Atlantic, and the legend connecting this demigod with Cadiz carries his activities a little farther out on the veritable ocean front. The rationalizing Diodorus, writing in the first century before Christ but dealing freely with traditions from a very much earlier time, presents Hercules as a great military commander, who, having set up his memorial pillars, proceeded to overrun and conquer Iberia (the present Spain and Portugal), passing thence to Liguria and thence to Italy after the manner of Hannibal, much nearer to Diodorus and even better known.17 It is evident that the earlier part of this campaign must include warfare beyond the Pillars on at least the Lusitanian Atlantic front. Furthermore, we are introduced to the western Amazons, who had their center of power on the Island Hesperia between Mount Atlas and the ocean and invaded both the inland mountaineers and their seaboard neighbors, the Gorgons—also feminine, if no great beauties.18 The poor Gorgons were subjugated but long afterward developed power again under Queen Medusa, only to be disastrously overcome by the great Greek general, Perseus. Both the Gorgons and the western Amazons seem to have had their abodes on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean south of the Strait of Gibraltar, along the front of what we now call Morocco and the region south of it. We cannot say how much of these tales belongs to Diodorus; but he certainly did not invent the whole of them and is not likely to have contrived their most distinctive features. The myth of Perseus, like that of Theseus and the Minotaur, meant something dimly and distantly historic. We think we partly understand the latter after the excavations in Crete. Similarly, the flights and feats of Perseus, as given in mythology, may be another way of saying that he made swift voyages far afield and descended on his enemies with deadly execution.

These tales as we have them from Diodorus do not represent the Atlantic coast dwellers as invading the Mediterranean; but some such incursions would naturally follow, by way of retaliation, the strenuous proceedings attributed to eastern-Mediterranean commanders, if, indeed, they did not precede and provoke them. We need not picture a host of Atlantides pouring through between the Pillars; but piratical descents of outer seafaring people were probable enough and might be on a rather large scale—subject, of course, to exaggeration by rumor. Nor would any of the threatened people be likely to distinguish closely between forces from a mainland coast and those from some outlying island. The enemy might well embody both elements.

Location and Size of Atlantis

The location of Atlantis, according to Plato, is fairly clear. It was in the ocean, “then navigable,” beyond the Pillars of Hercules; also beyond certain other islands, which served it as stepping-stones to the continental mass surrounding the Mediterranean. This effectually disposes of all pretensions in behalf of Crete or any other island or region of the inner sea. Atlantis must also have lain pretty far out in the ocean, to allow space for the intervening islands, which may well have been, at least in part, the Canary Islands or other surviving members of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes; still it could not have been too distant to prohibit the transfer of large forces when means of transportation were slow and scant. This rules out America, apart from the fact that America (like Crete) still exists, whereas Atlantis foundered, and the further fact that America is continental, while Atlantis is described as merely a large island. Besides, what evidence is there that America could send forth armies or navies for the invasion of Europe? Neither the Incas nor the Aztecs nor the Mayas were capable of such aggressions, and we know of nothing greater in this part of the world before the very modern development of the white man’s power.

As to the size of Atlantis, it is not quite clear whether we are to compare it with Mediterranean Africa and Asia Minor individually or collectively. Probably Plato merely meant to indicate a great area without any exact conception of its extent. If we think of an island as large as France and Spain we shall probably not miss the mark very widely. The site of the mid-Atlantic Sargasso Sea would be about the location indicated.

Improbability of the Existence of Such an Island

Now, was there any such great island and populous magnificent kingdom in mid-Atlantic or anywhere in the Atlantic Ocean about 11,400 years ago? If not absolutely impossible, it seems at least very unlikely. Through the mouth of Critias Plato tells how the people of Atlantis employed themselves in constructing their temples and palaces, harbors and docks, a great palace which they continued to ornament through many generations, canals and bridges, walls and towns, numerous statues of gold, fountains both cold and hot, baths, and a great multitude of houses.19

Such advance in civilization, such elaboration of organization, such splendor and power would certainly have overflowed abundantly on the islands intervening between Atlantis and the continental shore. It is not written that these all shared the same fate; and in point of fact the Azores, Madeira and her consorts, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde group are still in evidence. Some of them must have been within fairly easy reach of Atlantis if Atlantis existed. There is no indication that they have been newly created or have come up from below since that time. Even allowing for great exaggeration and assuming only a large and efficient population in a vast insular territory without the ascribed superfluity of magnificence, such a people would surely have left some kind of lasting memorial or relic beyond their own borders. Nothing of the kind has ever been found either in these islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes or elsewhere in that part of the earth.

The advocates of a real Atlantis try to pile up proofs of a great land mass existing at some time in the Atlantic Ocean, a logical proceeding so far as it goes but one that falls short of its mark, for the land may have ascended and descended again ages before the reputed Atlantis period. It is of no avail to demonstrate its presence in the Miocene, Pliocene, or Pleistocene epoch, or, indeed, at any time prior to the development of a well organized civilization among men, or, as Plato apparently reasons, between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. Also what is wanted is evidence of the great island Atlantis, not of the former seaward extension of some existing continent nor of any land bridge spanning the ocean. It is true that such conditions might serve as distant preliminaries for the production of Atlantis Island by the breaking down and submergence of the intervening land; but this only multiplies the cataclysms to be demonstrated and can have no real relevance in the absence of proof of the island itself. The geologic and geographic phenomena of pre-human ages are beside the question. The tale to be investigated is of a flourishing insular growth of artificial human society on a large scale, not so very many thousands of years ago, evidently removed from all tradition of engulfment and hence dreading it not at all but sending forth its conquering armies until the final defeat and annihilating cataclysm.

Termier’s Theory of an Ancient Atlantic Continental Mass

Nevertheless, inquiries as to an ancient Atlantic continental mass have an interest. We may cite a few of the recent outgivings. Termier tells us of an east-and-west arrangement of elevated lands across the Atlantic in earlier ages, as opposed to the present north-and-south system of islands and raised folds. By the former there was

Later he refers to

Floral and Faunal Evidence of Connection with Europe and Africa

Professor Schuchert, reviewing the paper of Termier above quoted, agrees in part and partly disagrees. He says:

Termier puts in evidence as biological corroboration the researches of Louis Germain, especially in the mollusca, which have convinced him of the continental origin of this fauna in the four archipelagoes, the Azores, Madeira, the Canaries, and Cape Verde. He also notes a few species still living in the Azores and the Canaries, though extinct in Europe, but found as fossils in Pliocene rocks of Portugal. He deduces from this a connection between the islands and the Iberian Peninsula down to some period during the Pliocene.23

Dr. Scharff has devoted some space and assiduous effort to similar considerations. He reviews the insular flora and fauna, pointing out that some of the forms common to the islands, or some of them, and a now distant continent could hardly have reached there over sea. He comes to the following conclusion: “I believe they [the islands] were still connected, in early Pleistocene times, with the continents of Europe and Africa, at a time when man had already made his appearance in western Europe, and was able to reach the islands by land.”24

He also points out that the Azores Islands were first known and named for their hawks, which feed largely on small mammalia, that presumably would have come thither overland, and also points out that some of the islands were named in Italian on old maps Rabbit Island, Goat Island, etc., before the Portuguese rediscovery in the fifteenth century.25 Those names (on several fifteenth-century maps St. Mary’s is Louo, Lovo, or Luovo—“Wolf Island,” cf. Portuguese lobo) are certainly interesting, but they may have been given for some supposed resemblance of outline or other fancy. There is this in favor of Dr. Scharff’s supposition: the name Corvo in its original form Corvis Marinis (Island of the Sea Crows) appears to have been prompted by the abundance of birds of a particular species—possibly cormorants, possibly black skimmers—and not by any typical bird form of the island itself. Also Pico, now named for its peak, was called the Isle of the Doves, and wild doves or pigeons are said to abound still on its mountain side. But, if we assume by analogy that Li Conigi (Rabbit Island) and Capraria (Goat Island) were so named by reason of the pre-Portuguese wild rabbits and goats, these may be the donations of earlier visitants or settlers—Italian, Carthaginians, or what not. We cannot well believe that wolves were voluntarily brought by man to Lovo (Lobo), now St. Mary’s; but here there may have been some mistake, as of dogs run wild or some play of imitative fancy, as before indicated. In any case these archaic island names are a long way from being convincing evidence of former land connection with any continent, still less of the former existence of Atlantis.

More recently Navarro, in an argument mainly geological, has also called attention to the continental character of some species of the fauna and flora of the eastern Atlantic islands, with the same implications as his predecessors.26 But there seems to be little real addition to the evidence of this nature; and no one has made it more apposite to the existence of Atlantis Island 12,000 or so years ago.

Evidence of Submergence

The great final catastrophe of Atlantis would surely write its record on the rocks both of the sea bed and the continental land masses. As to the ocean bottom it would be the natural repository for vitreous and other rocky products of volcanic and seismic action occurring above it. Termier relates what he considers very significant indications at a point 500 miles north of the Azores at a depth of 1,700 fathoms, where the grappling irons of a cable-mending ship dragged for several days over a mountainous surface of peaks and pinnacles, bringing up “little mineral splinters” evidently “detached from a bare rock, an actual outcropping sharp-edged and angular.” These fragments were all of a non-crystalline vitreous lava called tachylyte, which “could solidify into this condition only under atmospheric pressure.” He infers that the territory in question was covered with lava flows while it was still above water and subsequently descended to its present depth; also from the general condition of the rock surface that the caving in followed very closely on the emission of the lavas and that this collapse was sudden. He thinks, therefore, “that the entire region north of the Azores and perhaps the very region of the Azores, of which they may be only the visible ruins, was very recently submerged, probably during the epoch which the geologists call the present.” He believes also that like results would follow a “detailed dredging to the south and the southwest of these islands.”27

It will be observed that the whole of this very tempting edifice is built on the declared impossibility of tachylyte forming on the sea bottom under heavy water pressure. But Professor Schuchert insists that: “It is not pressure so much as it is a quick loss of temperature that brings about the vitreous structure in lava. In other words, vitreous lava apparently can be formed as well in the ocean depths as on the lands. What the cable layers got was probably the superficial glassy crust of probable subterranean lava flows.”28 If that be so, there is, of course, no need to infer a descent of territory into the depths in that region of the mid-Atlantic. This tachylyte matter seems enveloped in uncertainty.

On the other hand, it is well known that volcanic outbursts and earthquakes have been rather frequent and alarming even in modern times among the islands of the eastern Atlantic archipelagoes, especially the Canaries and the lowest and middle groups of the Azores. In some instances the nearest mainland also has suffered, as notably on “Lisbon-earthquake day,” and the various occasions of disturbances cited by Navarro. Also, there is the memorable instance of a small island that was thrust upward from the depths before the eyes of a British naval ship’s crew and remained in sight for several days. Changes of a distinctly non-volcanic character have also occurred, as when an appreciable slice of cliff wall broke away from Flores and sank, raising a great wave which did damage, with loss of life on Corvo, some nine miles away. Moreover, Corvo was once considerably larger than it is now in comparison with this neighbor, Flores (or Li Conigi), if we may trust to the general testimony of fourteenth-century and fifteenth-century maps. But all these shiftings and transformations for a long time past have been local and usually rather narrowly restricted. It does not follow that no depressions or elevations of greater extent have suddenly occurred in times before men regularly made permanent records; yet it must be owned that the belief in any very large sunken Atlantis derives no direct support from what we actually know of volcanic and seismic action in that region in historic centuries.

Relation of the Submarine Banks of the North Atlantic to the Problem

There remain to be considered a small array of undersurface insular items which seem germane to our inquiry. Sir John Murray tells us that:

All of these subaqueous mountain-top lands or hidden elevated plateaus are conspicuously nearer the ocean surface than the real depths of the sea—so much nearer that they inevitably raise the suspicion of having been above that surface within the knowledge and memory of man. It is notorious that coasts rise and fall all over the world in what may be called the normal non-spasmodic action of the strata, and sometimes the movement in one direction—upward or downward—seems to have persisted through many centuries. If we assume that Gettysburg Bank has been continuously descending at the not extravagant rate of two feet in a century, then it was a considerable island above water about the period dealt with by the priests of Sais. Apparently the rising of Labrador and Newfoundland since the last recession and dispersion of the great ice sheet has been even more. Here the elements of exact comparison in time and conditions are lacking; nevertheless, the reported uplift of more than 500 feet in one quarter and nearly 700 in another is impressive as showing what the old earth may do in steady endeavor. It must be borne in mind, too, that a sudden acceleration of the descent of Gettysburg Bank and its consorts may well have occurred at any stage in so feverishly seismic an area. All considered, it seems far from impossible that some of these banks may have been visible and even habitable at some time when men had attained a moderate degree of civilization. But they would not be of any vast extent.

Facts and Legends As to Submergences in Historic Times

Westropp has made an interesting and important disclosure of the legends of submerged lands with villages, churches, etc., all around the coasts of Ireland. In some instances they are believed to be magically visible again above the surface in certain conditions; in others the spires and walls of a fine city may at times, it is thought, be still seen through clear water. Nearly, if not quite, every one of them coincides with a shoal or bank of no great depth, the upjutting teeth of rocks, or a barren fragmentary islet—vestiges perhaps of something more conspicuous, extended, and alluring. Westropp says: “When we examine the sea bed, we see that it is not impossible (save Brasil and the land between Teelin and the Stags of Broadhaven) that islands may have existed within traditional memory at all the alleged sites.”30 In some cases considerable inroads of the ocean are perfectly well known to have occurred within relatively recent historic centuries. The same on a large scale is certainly true of Holland—witness Haarlem Lake and the Zuyder Zee. Other countries, perhaps most countries, might be called as witnesses.

In these considerations of known facts and legends still repeated we are dealing mostly with events of periods not excessively remote, but the same laws must have been at work and the same phenomena occurring in earlier millenniums.

If there were men to observe, the legend would follow the subsidence; and Phoenician or other voyagers would naturally bear it back to the Eastern Mediterranean, to Plato or the sources from which Plato derived it.

In any such case the submergence would most likely be exaggerated and made a great catastrophe, but there were special reasons why the exaggeration should be enormous in this particular story. It is the office of a myth or legend to explain. We see that in Plato’s time the Atlantic Ocean was believed, in part at least, to be no longer navigable, and with some modifications this idea persisted far down into the Middle Ages, involving at least a conviction of abnormal obstacles hardly to be overcome. The account of Critias is: “Since that time the sea in those quarters has become unnavigable; vessels cannot pass there because of the sands which extend over the site of the buried isle.” This item differs from the other features of the narration put into his mouth by Plato, in that it related to a present and continuing condition and in a way challenged investigation—which would have to be at a distant and ill-known region but was not really impracticable. It must be evident that Plato would not have written thus unless he relied on the established general repute of that part of the ocean for difficulty of navigation.

Reports of Obstruction to Navigation in Early Times

We get further light on this matter of obstruction from the Periplus of Scylax of Caryanda, the greater part of which must have been written before the time of Alexander the Great. Probably we may put down the passage as approximately of Plato’s own period. He begins on the European coast at the Strait of Gibraltar, makes the circuit of the Mediterranean, and ends at Cerne, an island of the African Atlantic coast, “which island, it is stated, is twelve days’ coasting beyond the Pillars of Hercules, where the parts are no longer navigable because of shoals, of mud, and of seaweed.”31 “The seaweed has the width of a palm and is sharp towards the points, so as to prick.”32

Similarly, when Himilco, parting from Hanno, sailed northward on the Atlantic about 500 B. C., he found weeds, shallows, calms, and dangers, according to the poet Avienus, who professes to repeat his account long afterward and is quoted by Nansen, with doubts inclining to acceptance. It reads:

Avienus also has the following:

Aristotle, as cited by Nansen, tells us in his “Meteorologica” that the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules was muddy and shallow and little stirred by the winds.35 In early life Aristotle was a pupil of Plato, and, though he afterward developed a widely different method and outlook, it is likely that their information as to this matter was in common, being supplied perhaps by Phoenician and other seamen.

In the passage quoted from Scylax and the first excerpt from Avienus the courses referred to are apparently too near the mainland shore to approach that prodigious accumulation of eddy-borne weeds in dead water which has long given to a great space of mid-Atlantic the name of the Sargasso Sea. But they show that huge seaweeds were very early associated with obstruction to navigation in seafaring minds and popular fancy. Perhaps they may also have suggested shallows as affording beds of nourishment for so enormous an output of vegetation. It would not readily occur to the early seagoing observers that the greatest of these entangling creations floated in masses quite free, though we now know this to be the case. In any event, it is evident that some imperfect knowledge of conditions far west of the Pillars of Hercules had made its way to Greece. Somewhere in that ocean of obscurity and mystery there was a vast dead and stagnant sea, presumably shallow, a sea to be shunned. Gigantic entrapping weeds and wallowing sea monsters freely distributed were recognized, too, as among the standing terrors of the Atlantic.

The Sargasso Sea As the Ancient Atlantis

It would be idle and wearying to follow such utterances through the rather numerous centuries that have elapsed since those early times. When the Magrurin or deluded explorers of Lisbon, at some undefined time between the early eighth century and the middle of the twelfth attempted, according to Edrisi, to cross the great westward Sea of Darkness they encountered an impassable tract of ocean and had to change their course, apparently reaching one of the Canary Islands. Later the map of the Pizigani brothers of 136736 (Fig. 2) contains in words and a saintly figure of warning a solemn protest against attempting to sail the unnavigable ocean tract beyond the Azores. As will be seen by a modern map (Fig. 1), this area includes the vast realm of the Sargasso—a waste of weed, shifting its borders with the seasons but constant in its characteristics in some parts and always to be found by little seeking—one of the permanent conspicuous features of earth’s surface.37 It is described by a writer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica as nearly equal to Europe in area, a statement hardly warranted unless by including all outlying tatters and fringes of Gulf weed floating free.38

It is one of the topics that tempt and have always tempted exaggeration and misunderstandings. The effect on a bright mind of current nautical yarns concerning it is shown by Janvier’s “In the Sargasso Sea,” a narrative almost as extravagant as Plato’s tale of Atlantis, in its own quite different way. One of the more moderate preliminary passages may be cited:

He admits this theory of formation was inaccurate but later refers to “the dense wreck-filled center of the Sargasso Sea” and makes his castaway hero declare:

Sir John Murray naturally gives a more moderate and scientific account, explaining:

Finally we have from the Hydrographic Office the official naval and scientific statement of the case. In the little treatise already referred to, Lieutenant Soley tells us that the southeast branch of the Gulf Stream “runs in the direction of the Azores, where it is deflected by the cold upwelling stream from the north and runs into the center of the Atlantic Basin, where it is lost in the dead water of the Sargasso Sea.”42 As to just what this is the office answers: