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Annotated To Note Drilling At Funafuti Atoll

This is a very rare world map on Mercator's Projection, issued by the firm of W. & A.K. Johnston in the first decade of the 20th Century.

The map presents a detailed depiction of the world, with shipping line distances shown in the oceans.  Along the bottom are 7 inset maps covering the Northeastern US and Canada, Caribbean, North Sea, West African Colonies, Mediterranean, and the area around Japan & Korea.

The map includes annotations referencing the boring at Funfuti Atoll, which had been reported in the Royal Geographical Society’s Report on The Atoll of Funafuti, published in 1904.

A second annotation shows the words "move in" and a line to Norrköping, Sweden.  This almost certainly reflects the owner's exhibition at the Norrköping Exhibition of Art and Industry which opened in September 1906, a major exhibition showcasing art and industrial achievements with over 900 exhibitors. 

Funafuti Atoll

The Funafuti Atoll, part of the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu, played a pivotal role in the history of geology and the development of modern theories regarding coral reef formation. The geological drilling conducted there in the late 19th century stands as a landmark event in scientific exploration, revealing critical insights into the processes underlying atoll formation and the subsidence theory postulated by Charles Darwin. 

Charles Darwin’s seminal work The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs (1842) laid the groundwork for understanding coral reef formation. Darwin proposed that coral reefs developed in response to the slow subsidence of volcanic islands, with corals maintaining their position near the sea surface by growing upward. According to his theory, fringing reefs would transform into barrier reefs, and eventually into atolls, as the volcanic island eroded and sank beneath the ocean. While this hypothesis gained considerable acceptance, it lacked definitive geological evidence, particularly data from the substructure of coral atolls. This gap spurred subsequent efforts to test Darwin’s ideas. 

In 1896, the Royal Society of London initiated a scientific expedition to Funafuti Atoll to drill into its coral reef structure and obtain geological evidence to confirm or refute Darwin’s subsidence theory. Funafuti was selected due to its status as a classic atoll, offering an ideal site to study reef formation. The leader of the expedition, Professor William Sollas of Oxford University, sought to penetrate the reef and reach the volcanic base presumed to underlie the atoll.

Using a diamond drill, the team successfully bored to a depth of 111 feet (34 meters). The extracted cores, composed entirely of coral and reef limestone, revealed no trace of volcanic material, providing early support for Darwin's theory. However, the limited depth reached during the first drilling phase left uncertainties, prompting subsequent expeditions. 

Encouraged by the initial results, further drilling campaigns took place in 1897 and 1898. These expeditions, led by Sir T. W. Edgeworth David, a prominent geologist from Australia, used enhanced equipment to achieve greater depths. By the end of the 1898 campaign, drilling had reached 1,114 feet (340 meters). The cores retrieved confirmed that the structure of the atoll consisted of layers of coral and limestone extending far below sea level, without any evidence of volcanic material within the drill’s reach.

The findings reinforced the validity of Darwin’s theory of subsidence. The observed depth of the reef limestone demonstrated that the coral had grown continuously as the volcanic island beneath it subsided, precisely as Darwin had predicted. Although the volcanic base was not reached, the results represented a landmark achievement in geology. 

The Funafuti drilling project marked the first major empirical effort to test a geological hypothesis through deep drilling. It set a precedent for future scientific investigations into coral reefs and contributed to the emerging field of stratigraphy. The data collected confirmed that coral reefs could grow over vast periods, keeping pace with geological subsidence and sea-level changes. Additionally, the project highlighted the role of atolls as historical archives of climate and oceanographic conditions, which would become increasingly relevant in later studies.   

Rarity

The map is surprisingly rare.

Johnston's World Wide Series of Library and Office Maps seems to have been a relatively shortlived venture. OCLC locates only maps the World and South Africa from this series.

OCLC locates two examples of the world map: University of Wisconsin Milwaukee / American Geographical Society Library and University of Oxford.  Oxford dates their example 1906, UWM dates their examples 1909.