Ancient Navigators Series
Rufus Festus Avienus, was an official in the Roman Empire during the fourth century AD. Not much is known about him, except for some surviving manuscripts in which he commented and reproduced, in verse, geographic accounts of older authors. His rhymes were popular at the time, and fortunately provide a glimpse into ancient historic voyages.
His Ora Marítima has survived, though incomplete, but the 713 verses provide some interesting information on Punic navigators into the Atlantic.
You can find two English language translations online: here and here, and also a Latin version
Avienus' description of the expedition of Carthagininan Himilco is interesting. Himilco set sail around 450 BC from Carthage, and was the first to explore the coast of northeastern Europe. Pliny the Elder also mentions him (see Book 2, 169).
"110 It was the habit of the Tartessians
To do business among the furthest parts of the Oestrymnides.
The colonists from Carthage and the ordinary people, bearing on through
The pillars of Hercules, used to come down to these seas,
Which Himilco of Carthage declared –
As he reports he himself proved by sailing all the way –
Could scarcely be crossed in four months.
This is so because no breezes drive the ship,
120 And the sluggish water of the inert sea stands still.
He adds this comment too: among the currents,
There is a lot of seaweed, and often, in the manner of a bush,
It checks a ship. He says that nonetheless here
The surface of the sea does not extend to a great depth,
And the seabed is scarcely covered with a little water.
Here and there sea creatures meet, and sea monsters
Swim amid the slow ships sluggishly crawling along.
If anyone were to dare to launch a cutter into the waves"
This is the navigation from Tartessus north, towards Great Britain, and probably Scandinavia. Tartessus is a city whose exact location remains unknown, but probably stood close to the mouth of the Guadalquivir River in Spain, near modern Cadiz.
The thick seaweed, sluggish water, lack of wind seems to depict the Sargasso Sea, that lies west of the Azores Islands, in the Mid Atlantic. Which is surprising, as Carthaginians were not known for sailing into the deep Ocean.
The poem continues:
"380 Beyond, towards the area to the west,
Himilco relates that from the Pillars there is a sea without end:
The ocean lies open across a wide area, and the sea stretches out.
No man has entered upon these seas; no man has ever set ships on that ocean,
Because the sea lacks winds that would drive the ship along,
And no breeze from the sky favours a ship.
Then, because a mist clothes the air with a kind of cloak, fog always conceals the sea
And lasts through the day, which is rather thick with clouds.
That is the Ocean, which roars far off around the vast earth.
That is the great sea. This sea encircles the shores.
This is the source of the water of the inner sea; this is the parent of our sea."
An intimidating view of the Atlantic as endless, mist-shrouded and lacking winds to move the ships. This Ocean was the source and parent of their "inner sea", the Mediterranean.
Perhaps the dim view they provided of the Atlantic was planned to dissuade competitors from venturing into the ocean. They probably had a base in the Azores Islands and navigated the Atlantic, and wanted to keep it for themselves.
Sargasso Sea
There is a region of the north Atlantic Ocean known as the Sargasso Sea because of the large amount of a floating seaweed that lives there, the sargassum (Sargassum natans and Sargassum fluitans).
These algae grow in mats that float on the surface thanks to tiny air bladders that provide buoyancy. They thrive in the sunny temperate regions of the Ocean and drift, pushed by the wind and ocean currents which concentrate them in this region.
They form a special habitat which provides food and shelter for fish, the European and American eels, and sea turtles.
As you can see in the map above (which depicts the probability of encountering sargasso during a transatlantic voyage, it covers a large area, up to 5.2 million km2 (2 million sq. mi.)
Global warming and large quantities of of nutrients from fertilizers, agricultural runoff, washed into the ocean has caused explosive algal blooms of sargasso in the Atlantic Ocean between South America and Guinea. These are then taken by oceanic currents into the Caribbean and Florida, where they wash up onto the beaches and rot there, on the sand. This is a headache for resorts in the region (below is a view of a beach in Florida, US).
Columbus reported it, and he was familiar with the seaweed as he had heard about it from the Portuguese who voyaged along the Atlantic coast of Africa. It was depicted in the past as a dangerous region, where ships were entangled in the floating mats of seaweed, with no wind to set them free. Of course, this is not true.
With a nostalgic and anecdotical tone, I remember the first episode of a mid-1960s cartoon, Johnny Quest, "The mystery of the lizard men" where the boy, his brother Hadji, his scientist dad and Race Bannon, their bodyguard (plus their dog, Bandit) y visited the Sargasso sea. It was portrayed as a ship graveyard, with ancient rotting ships covered with decaying greenish-yellow seaweed, the sea carpeted with floating algae. Scary! Below are two stills from that episode.
Patagonian Monsters - Cryptozoology, Myths & legends in Patagonia Copyright 2009-2025 by Austin Whittall ©
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