St. Matthew Island (phantom island) and H.C. Adams (1883) suggest that the error may have arisen from a confusion with Annobón Island, which lies at the same latitude but at 5°38′E longitude. St. Matthew Island (phantom island) St Matthew Island is a phantom island once thought to lie roughly one thousand kilometers northeast of Ascension Island in the Atlantic Ocean. It appeared on navigational charts until as late as the early twentieth century. It was supposedly located at approximately 2°S 8°W, and was alleged to have been discovered by the Portuguese on St. Matthew's Day 1516. It was shown and named on several maps going
Penal transportation in 1991. New Caledonia became a French penal colony from the 1860s until the end of the transportations in 1897. About 22,000 criminals and political prisoners (most notably Communards) were sent to New Caledonia. In British colonial India, opponents of British rule were transported to the Cellular Jail in the Andaman islands. The most famous transported prisoner is probably French army officer Alfred Dreyfus, wrongly convicted of treason in a trial in 1894, held in an atmosphere of antisemitism. He was sent to Devil's Island, a French penal colony in Guiana. The case became a cause célèbre known as the