Mr Grasse states that the British believe in a large and imaginary fish called a Leviathan, rubbish, the Leviathan was mentioned in both the Bible (Old Testament) and in the Hebrew Bible, but the name came to mean nothing more than a large whale, and there are plenty of them about.
The “fact” that the British put fanciful monsters on their maps is – as far as I can find out – not true I can't find any British maps with these monsters. I can, however find plenty of Icelandic examples, but no British ones. I'd love to be proved wrong on this, if anyone has any please let me know.
In the last paragraph Mr Grasse says that while we were worried to go too far into the unknown the Spanish and Portuguese explorers blazed across the seas. It's true to say that the Spanish and Portuguese did discover many new lands, but when they got there what did they do? Wiped out most of the indigenous cultures that's what.
While I'm on the subject of mapmakers, it is often quoted that America got it's name from an Italian mapmaker called Amerigo Vespucci. This is most probably not the case, it was actually the Welshman Richard Amerike. The reason it doesn't seem plausible that it was named after Amerigo Vespucci is that it if people had places named after them, it would be their surname, rather than their forename that was used.
After doing more research on this topic I have come across a story about a passenger ship called the Mauretania, in 1934 a series of articles appeared in the highly respected newspaper The New York Times stating that the crew of the Mauretania had numerous sightings of sea serpents, this, of course, was a lie perpetrated by both The New York Times and the reporter T. Walter Williams, but, it seems that most of the people in the USA who read the reports believed them. So just remind me Mr Grasse, which nation believe in fictitious sea serpents?
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