The ship of Christopher Columbus is visited by ghosts of the warriors of Atlantis. Engraving by E. Goodall after J.M.W. Turner.

An episode in a miniature epic poem by Samuel Rogers, 'The voyage of Columbus', canto II: while sailing across the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus and his crew are visited by ghosts from the drowned island of Atlantis: " …armed shapes of god-like stature passed! / Slowly along the evening-sky they went, / As on the edge of some vast battlement; / Helmet and shield, and spear and gonfalon / Streaming a baleful light that was not of the sun!"

"In Goodall’s engraving, the eerie luminosity of Turner’s watercolour is rendered with even greater effect due to the contrast between the brilliant white light of the sunset, the grey sky and the pitch-black form of the ship."-- Gamer, loc. cit

1834

1 print : engraving ; platemark 29.2 x 15.2 cm

Meredith Gamer, 'The vision of Columbus, for Rogers's 'Poems' c.1830–2 by Joseph Mallord William Turner', catalogue entry, August 2006, in David Blayney Brown (ed.), J.M.W. Turner: sketchbooks, drawings and watercolours, December 2012, https://www.tate.org.uk/art/research-publications/jmw-turner/joseph-mallord-william-turner-the-vision-of-columbus-for-rogerss-poems-r1133375, accessed 14 July 2015

Wellcome Collection 524645i