Page 2nd Cover: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (September 1971)

Pytheas, the Greek.

One of England's earliest visitors.

In the late 300's B.C., Pytheas of Mas- salia, explorer, geographer and navi- gator, set out to see what was on the other side of the Pillars of Hercules.

The purpose of the expedition was to find the source of the tin and amber that the traders of Massalia received from the north. Pytheas also wanted to find out if there really was a place where the sun shone all night long— the legendary Thule.

He sailed up the coast to where Brit- tany is today and crossed the channel to the Cornish coast, becoming the first European to reach and describe the "Pretannic Isles."

Although the details are sketchy,

Pytheas probably sailed around Great

Britain. He described it correctly as be- ing of a triangular shape with the sides having a proportion of 3:6:8.

He pushed on, looking for Thule but he never got that far north. He did observe a day that was nineteen hours long (which could have been in the northern Shetlands) and he may have seen one twenty-two hours long (above 63°). But he never made it to

Thule.

Pytheas returned home after six years. The book he wrote was lost and many of his observations were ridi- culed. However; modern scientists have compared his surviving observa- tions and notes with their own and have found many of them quite accu- rate.

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