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Almost two centuries ago, an extraordinary event occurred in the Sicilian Channel: a strip of land, which would soon become known as Isola Ferdinandea, emerged from the sea. But this uncommon event, however, was the trigger for a much bigger dispute, between powerful nations such as England, France, and the kingdom of the Two Sicilies.
But how could such an event occur, what were the natural causes that led to the appearance of an entire islet out of nowhere? What was Ferdinandea Island really? What were the consequences of this event? And how was the dispute between nations resolved?
Ferdinandea Island and the Empedocles volcano
It is no mystery that the waters surrounding Sicily are affected by submarine volcanic activity. Many testimonies, in fact, have come down to the present day since the third century BC; the “remnants” of underwater eruptions were often noted up until the seventeenth century.
Just think of the territory of the Campi Flegrei of the Sicilian Sea: a vast area between two coasts, the Tunisian and the Sicilian, within which it is possible to find at least 13 submarine volcanoes, which have, over the centuries, shown their activity several times. One of these, Empedocles, is closely linked to the curious islet.
It all began during the summer of 1831, when the southwestern area of Sicily was affected by numerous and rather strong earthquakes. There were several boats that noticed, in the waters that separated the island of Lampedusa from the coast of Sciacca, in the Agrigento area, a considerable boiling of the sea: the fish of the area began to die, due to the poisonous gases released during what, for all intents and purposes, it was an ongoing submarine eruption.
It was a very violent eruption: testimonies from that time tell of tall columns of smoke that came out of the water, together with eruptive material, such as lava and pumice stone. However, the intense submarine volcanic activity led to an unexpected result: the emergence of an islet. If, at the beginning of July 1831, it measured just about 8 meters in height, at the time of its total emergence, on July 12, it reached over 60 meters in height, for about 4 km² in width.
A dispute between nations
The newborn island immediatly caused what could today be called an international incident. As “no man’s land,” in theory, it should have belonged to whoever set foot there first. Therefore, it did not take long before foreign sailors landed there to take possession of it. The first were the British, who planted their own flag at the end of August 1831, naming the new islet “Graham”.
The French, annoyed by this gesture, landed on the new island at the end of the following month: numerous studies were carried out on the materials forming the new emerged land. The island was called “Iulia”, from the month in which it appeared, and claimed by the French state. In the meantime, in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, general discontent was growing: why did other nations claim possession of an island born near the Sicilian coast?
King Ferdinand II of Bourbon then sent a corvette, the Etna, to hoist the flag of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies on what was called, in honor of the ruler, Isola Ferdinandea. Not only that: Ferdinand sent the representatives of England and France a memorandum on an act promulgated on August 17 of the same year, which saw the islet in the possession of the kingdom of the Two Sicilies. But this caused the ire of the two nations: the new island had lit the spark for an international incident.
The end of Ferdinandea Island
The international dispute, therefore, risked becoming something more. Despite this, it resolved itself in a natural way. As a product of an underwater eruption, Ferdinandea Island was composed of materials such as tephra, which is not particularly durable in contact with sea water.
For this reason, not even five months later, between the end of October and the beginning of November 1831, sailors began to report the unstoppable erosion and sinking of the new island: on November 12 of the same year, Ferdinandea Island disappeared from the surface, swallowed up by the waters below. Unconfirmed testimonies speak of a re-emergence in the following years, however this could be an almost impossible occurrence.
This is because Ferdinandea Island is one of the highest accessory cones of the Empedocles volcano, whose base lies 400 meters below sea level: the eruption brought it beyond the surface of the sea, but once eroded, this volcanic cone could hardly be reconstructed in the exact same position.
What remains today of the much disputed island is however the highest point of Empedocles: it lies between 6 and 9 meters below sea level, easily visited by diving and amusing target of reviews that define it as “neverland”, almost like an Atlantis which, unlike the myth, it is possible to see.
Thanks to the ease of reaching it, in contemporary times some divers placed a plate there, which reminded in everlasting memory that this territory would always belong to the Sicilian people. Furthermore, in the 1980s, the islet was the protagonist of a curious incident: it was hit by an American missile, being mistaken for a submarine.
Many people, nowadays, wonder if the Ferdinandea Island will rise to the surface. The activity in the waters where it is located, in fact, was clearly visible especially after some seismic events: the most recent was in 2002. However, the extraordinary nature of this event makes it unique in its kind: new islands could be able to rise in surface, but certainly not the Ferdinandea Island which, in any case, remains the protagonist of a curious story and an international accident, entering the legend among the waters of a sea that still has a lot to tell.
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