For a few months in 1831, the sea off Sicily seemed to be making room for something new. Fishermen had already noticed dead fish floating to the surface, their bodies carrying the smell of sulphur. Then came smoke, ash and lava. By late summer, a small volcanic island stood above the water. It was not especially large, but its position mattered. Ships travelling through the Mediterranean passed nearby, and several European powers quickly began considering what possession of the new land might mean. Before the arguments could be settled, though, the island began to crumble. Within months, it had slipped beneath the waves again.
An underwater eruption created a new island in the Mediterranean
The first warnings were not particularly dramatic. In July 1831, fishermen working south-west of Sicily began finding dead fish in the water. The animals appeared strangely cooked, and the smell of sulphur was strong enough to make some people ill.According to the BBC, on the night of 10 July, sailors saw the source of the disturbance. A volcanic vent had broken through the surface, sending out smoke and fragments of ash. Lava followed. What began as an underwater eruption gradually built itself upwards until there was solid ground above the Mediterranean.By August, the new island was roughly 800 metres across and about 60 metres high. In an era when the workings of submarine volcanoes were poorly understood, its appearance was easily given a larger significance. Some observers wondered whether they were witnessing the beginning of something much bigger.It stood in the Strait of Sicily, close to routes linking the western Mediterranean with waters leading towards the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. The Suez Canal did not yet exist, so shipping between Europe and Asia followed different routes from those familiar today. A small piece of land in the right position could therefore have strategic value well beyond its size.The new arrival acquired several names almost immediately. The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies called it Ferdinandea, after King Ferdinand II. British sailors referred to it as Graham, while the French called it Julia. The competing names were a sign of something more than confusion.
Britain, France and Sicily lay claim to the new Mediterranean island
The Kingdom of the Two Sicilies had a straightforward argument. The island had appeared in waters close to Sicily and between existing territories belonging to the kingdom. From its perspective, Ferdinandea was naturally part of its domain.Britain took a different view. British sailors said they had been the first to land there and treated the island as terra nullius; territory belonging to nobody. A British flag was raised, and the island was named Graham after Sir James Graham, the First Lord of the Admiralty.France followed. Surveyors were sent to examine and map the new land, and a French flag was planted at its highest point. The name Julia referred to the month in which the island had appeared.There was an element of absurdity to the dispute, but the strategic concerns behind it were real. The surrounding waters were used by privateers, armed vessels authorised by governments to attack enemy shipping. Britain, France and the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies all operated such ships, while Ottoman vessels were among their targets.An island positioned in the middle of these maritime routes could potentially provide a useful base or observation point. The arguments, however, were taking place against a much less glamorous background.Sicily was going through a period of political uncertainty. Italy was not yet a unified country, and Ferdinand II had only recently become king of the Two Sicilies. Opposition to his rule was already developing. At the same time, cholera was spreading across Europe, bringing fear and disruption to communities that had little effective treatment available.For many ordinary Sicilians, the sudden appearance of an island was hardly the most pressing problem. The political and naval authorities had other reasons to pay attention.
Why Sicily’s volcanic landscape made the island’s appearance possible
The region was never an unlikely place for volcanic activity. Sicily sits in a complicated tectonic setting where the African and Eurasian plates interact. The movement of these enormous slabs of Earth’s crust creates conditions in which earthquakes and volcanic activity can occur.Much of the volcanic landscape is visible on land. Mount Etna is the obvious example. But the same geological processes continue beneath the sea. Around the Strait of Sicily are numerous submarine volcanic cones. Each represents a separate eruption rather than a single continuously active volcano. Magma can force its way upwards through a weakness in the seabed, cool and harden, and leave behind a solid volcanic structure.A later eruption may find another route around that hardened material, creating another cone nearby. Ferdinandea was one of these short-lived submarine eruptions. Its construction was surprisingly quick. Its destruction was quicker still.The material forming much of the island was scoria, a lightweight volcanic rock full of holes created by trapped gas. It may look solid enough when piled above the sea, but it is far more vulnerable to erosion than dense volcanic rock. They attacked the loose material around the island’s edges, gradually eating away at it. By the end of September, the highest point had fallen to roughly 18 metres. A month later, only a few feet remained above the water.Between December 1831 and January 1832, Ferdinandea was gone. Not destroyed in a spectacular final eruption. Not swallowed by some sudden geological catastrophe. It was simply worn down until the Mediterranean covered it again.
How Sicily’s earthquakes and volcanoes shaped its folklore
Long before scientists could explain plate movements or submarine volcanic cones, people living around Sicily had developed their own ways of making sense of earthquakes and eruptions. The island’s mythology is filled with figures and stories connected to the sea, fire and the unstable ground beneath people’s feet.One of the best-known is Colapesce, a legendary fisherman said to have been able to remain underwater for extraordinary lengths of time. In one version of the tale, he is challenged by a king to dive into the sea and retrieve objects from the seabed.During one descent, Colapesce discovers that one of the great supports holding Sicily above the water has been damaged by the heat of Mount Etna. He stays below to repair it, preventing the island from sinking.Some versions of the legend say that he occasionally returns to the surface to look at the land. His movements are then associated with earthquakes and tremors.The story belongs to folklore, not geology. Yet it reflects something very real about life in Sicily: the earth has always been capable of changing suddenly beneath people’s feet.Earthquakes have repeatedly devastated the island and surrounding region. The 1693 Val di Noto earthquake caused enormous destruction, while the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami killed tens of thousands of people.The science behind these events is now understood in far greater detail. The fear they produced, however, is much older than modern seismology.
The island disappeared but the argument did not quite end
The strange part of Ferdinandea’s story is that its disappearance did not completely remove it from public attention. A century and a half later, the possibility of another eruption in the same area briefly seemed to return. In 1968, an earthquake was followed by bubbling or apparently boiling seawater near the former site of the island.For anyone familiar with what had happened in 1831, the sight was suggestive.There was talk of the island returning. Sicily was not prepared to let another country get there first, either. A stone marker was placed on the submerged remains to reinforce the claim that the territory belonged to the Sicilian people.The bubbling water was eventually understood to have another explanation. Gas trapped between layers of rock had travelled upwards and escaped through the seabed. It looked like volcanic activity, but it was not the beginning of another island-building eruption.There was also a geological reason not to expect the old island to simply repeat its performance. The conduit through which magma had previously travelled had been blocked by hardened volcanic material. A future eruption in the region could happen, but it would not necessarily use the same route.
What remains beneath the Strait of Sicily
Ferdinandea may have disappeared from the surface, but it has not disappeared from the geological record. Modern surveys of the seabed have made it possible to see the remains of the island with a precision that would have been unimaginable to the people who watched it emerge in 1831.The volcanic structure now lies roughly nine metres below sea level. From the seabed, it rises about 137 metres, forming a steep-sided, truncated cone. A central peak marks the upper part of the old volcanic conduit.The hard remains have also become part of the marine environment. Coral has colonised the submerged structure, and fish now occupy a place that once caused international arguments between European governments. It is an odd reversal. What was briefly treated as strategic territory is now, from the surface, almost invisible.The island’s disappearance also explains why it became such an enduring curiosity. For several months it was unquestionably there. People mapped it, named it, planted flags on it and argued over who owned it. Then the sea covered it again before the dispute could amount to much.
A real island with an almost fictional afterlife
The vanished island caught the attention of writers, among them Jules Verne, who referred to it in his work and used the idea of a disappearing or elusive island in his fiction. Some literary historians have also suggested that Ferdinandea may have contributed to the imaginative background surrounding Neverland, the unreachable island of J M Barrie’s Peter Pan stories.That connection is difficult to prove. The island’s influence on literature, however, is easier to understand.Ferdinandea had all the ingredients of a story that seemed invented: a new island rising from the sea, rival nations arriving to claim it, several competing names and, before long, nothing visible at all.In Italy, it acquired fitting nicknames such as l’isola che non c’è which means the island that isn’t there. Today, there is no island to visit. There is only the submerged volcanic cone, mapped on the seabed and gradually incorporated into a marine ecosystem.
