Bacalao

This article is about the phantom island. For Portuguese dish, see Bacalhau. For Italian equivalent, see baccalà. For salted and dried fish product on which these are based, see Dried and salted cod. For the album by Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, see Bacalao (album).

Bacallao (or Terra do Bacalhau) was a phantom island depicted on several early 16th century maps and nautical charts. The name first appears on a chart in 1508, but there are earlier accounts of Bacalao.^{[citation needed]} Bacallao literally means "cod" or "stockfish".

According to Gaspar Frutuoso in his work Saudades da Terra written in the 1570s, the Portuguese navigator João Vaz Corte-Real was in 1472 granted lands in the Azores by the king of Portugal, because of his discovery of the Terras do Bacalhau. However, the work of Frutuoso is generally seen as not very reliable as it contains a great deal of misinformation. Also, Bartolomé de Las Casas wrote about Portuguese voyages of discovery to Tierra de los Bacallao.^{[citation needed]} This has led some to believe that Corte-Real reached the Americas a couple of decades before Columbus.

Off the northeast tip of Newfoundland's Avalon Peninsula, there is a Baccalao Island; however, it was likely named after the mythical island.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Cape Cod
• Sacred Cod of Massachusetts
• Pre-Columbian trans-oceanic contact
• Vinland
• Brazil (mythical island)

Bibliography

• Diffie, Bailey Wallys; Shafer, Boyd C.; Winius, George Davison (1977), Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415-1580, U of Minnesota Press