The Isle of Demons

Available for over a year

Join Orcadian composer Erland Cooper on a late night voyage around the Atlantic in search of Phantom Islands... The Isle of Demons - or Île des Démons - was believed to be located at the top of the Straits of Belle Isle which divides Newfoundland and Labrador. It first appeared in 1508 on Johannes Ruysch's world map with the description: "Demons assaulted ships near these islands, which were avoided, but not without peril.” It also appeared on other leading cartographers' maps including Gérard Mercator's 1569 world map; Giovanni Battista Ramusio's map of New England and New France in 1556; and Abraham Ortelius’ 1569 map. The phantom island gained notoriety when French noblewoman Marguerite de La Rocque de Roberval claimed to have been abandoned there by her uncle in 1542. After Marguerite's rescue and return to France, her story was told in Marguerite de Navarre's Heptameron in 1558, Belleforest’s Histoires Tragiques in 1572, and Andre Thevet's Cosmographie Universelle in 1575. L'Île des Démons is thought perhaps to be based on a real island, most logically the remote Quirpon Island (pronounced Karpoon). Ed English comes from a seafaring family and owns the Quirpon island lighthouse and adjacent Lighthouse Inn, together Ed and Erland explore this ghostly phantom isle. Perhaps the terrifying screams came from the now extinct Great Auk - Erland remembers a stuffed specimen in the Orkney museum in Stromness. Score by Erland Cooper, recorded at Studio Orphir Violin, Freya Goldmark Cello, Klara Shumann Soprano, Lottie Greenhow and Josephine Stephenson Readings by Keeley Forsyth from Marguerite or The Isle of Demons by George Martin (1886) Producer: Victoria Ferran Exec producer: Susan Marling A Just Radio production for BBC Radio 3