Willoughby's Land

Willoughby 's Land is a phantom island in the Barents Sea, which was to be found from the late 16th to the mid-17th century maps of the north polar region.

Sir Hugh Willoughby undertook in 1553 on behalf of English merchants first attempt to reach China via the Northeast Passage. On the 72nd degree of north latitude, he came upon the coast of Novaya Zemlya, its latitude it but much too far west ansetzte. Later mariners, such as Arthur Pet ( 1580), Willem Barents (1594 ) and Henry Hudson ( 1608) found at the specified location no country.

Willoughby 's Land appears on Petrus Plancius ' map of the North Polar Region from 1594 as well as on Gerhard Mercator's map published posthumously in 1595 west of Novaya Zemlya. Already Plancius did not believe in their existence. Because the Barents island could not be found, it is not marked on his map of 1599. On other cards, so by Johannes Willem Blaeu and Janssonius, but it is still to be found to at least the 1640s.