Navy finds ‘Moby-dick’ island has been wrongly placed since 1937

THE remote Pacific island that inspired Herman Melville’s Moby-dick has been in the wrong place for 85 years, the Royal Navy has discovered.

Henderson Island, one of four in the Pitcairn chain, is one mile south of the position marked on charts used by mariners the world over since 1937.

Portsmouth-based patrol ship HMS Spey confirmed the error as part of efforts to check and update charts of waters around British Overseas Territories, and improve navigation using sonar, airborne laser techniques and satellites to better understand, manage and protect the islands.

Melville based Moby-dick on the true story of the American whaling ship Essex, which was sunk in mid-ocean by a 40ft sperm whale, with the survivors sailing to Henderson in a lifeboat.

The island is about the size of Oxford, but uninhabited.

Navigator Lieutenant Michael Royle used radar imagery gathered by Spey’s sensors and GPS positioning, overlaying the details on the existing charts of the Pitcairn chain.

“In theory, the image returned by the radar should sit exactly over the charted feature – in this case, Henderson Island,” Lt Royle said.

“I found that wasn’t the case – the radar overlay was a mile away from the island, which means that the island was plotted in the incorrect position when the chart was first produced.

“The notes on the chart say that it was produced in 1937 from aerial photography, which implies that the aircraft which took the photos was slightly off in its navigational calculations.”

Henderson Island was last visited by the Royal Navy in late 2018 when HMS Montrose conducted an environmental survey to study the impact of plastics in the oceans.

Pacific currents dump masses of debris on the shore of the British Overseas Territory – around 270 objects every day, with as many as 40 million items of plastic and rubbish scarring Henderson’s beaches, earning it the title “most polluted island in the world”.

The crew also took water samples from all of the Pitcairn islands.

“Scientists in the UK have really scant data about the ocean in this region – its salinity, temperature, water pressure and the like,” Lt Royle added.