Invisible ships
Open-knowledge reference entry
The invisible ships (or ships not seen) myth claims that when European explorers' ships approached either North America, South America, or Australia, the appearance of their large ships was so foreign to the native people that they could not even see the vessels in front of them. It is likely based on a passage of Joseph Banks' diary describing HMS Endeavour's arrival in Botany Bay. Banks wrote that the natives did not appear surprised or concerned from a distance, but unlike the myth, once the ships approached land they were confronted by armed men. Though the common versions of the myth are apocryphal and not based in science, it has been promoted by New Age personalities, prominently in the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!?
Variations
There are several apocryphal variations on the myth, all of which involve native people being unable to see ships approaching due to perceptual blindness. In some versions, the explorer is not Captain Cook but Ferdinand Magellan or Christopher Columbus, or the land is the coast of North or South America.
The story has come to be associated with New Age works. A prominent example is the 2004 film What the Bleep Do We Know!?, created by the New Age sect Ramtha's School of Enlightenment. During a discussion in the film of the influence of experience on perception, neuroscientist Candace Pert relays a version of the myth whereby Native Americans were unable to see Columbus's ships because they were outside the natives' experience. The movie goes on to add a shaman to the narrative, who began to see ripples in the water and eventually could see the ship.
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This entry incorporates text from “Invisible ships” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.