Tintin Forums

I was trying to pinpoint the exact location referenced at the end of UNICORN in my Google Earth but I'm having issues.

It's shown at the very end of the story to be 20-37-42 N, 70-52-15 W. Since Google Earth won't, to my knowledge, allow me to pinpoint exact spots by keying in their coordinates, I had to roll my mouse around until I got a rough idea of exactly where those coordinates lie.

Unless I'm very much mistaken, I believe the coordinates lead you to (roughly) some place north of the Dominican Republic and east of Cuba, near Turks & Caicos. Anybody know more? Thanks.

hi wave

Did you pay attention to the point, that on page 23 in Red Racham's Treasure (pg. 25 in 3 in 1), Tintin realised that Archie used the Greenwich meridian in his calculations but sir Francis used Paris meridian, which is 2 degrees east of London. So Wave you have to try 20-37-42 N and 68-52-15 W, there's the place you are looking for. :-)

tuhatsauna

I tried to track this down some time back with a Mac application that allowed the user to type in coordinates and showed a world map.
Here's the fanciful result.

Perfect! Awesome! Thanks TintinQuiz.

And tunaguano, that's an excellent point you raise. But wouldn't those coordinates take you to a different spot entirely? We've got the Greenwich meridian and the Paris meridian and each will locate a different spot. Well, it's the same general area, anyway.

waveofplague
And tunaguano, that's an excellent point you raise. But wouldn't those coordinates take you to a different spot entirely?

I don't quite get what you mean, wave. I think Tuhatkauno's co-ordinates take you to exactly the right spot, ie: 2 degrees east of your original Greenwich meridian-based co-ordinates. The "Frank H's map" that comes up when you first click Tintin Quiz's link is incorrect, putting the island where you (and Haddock) first thought it was. If you click on that map and then scroll down, you'll see the correct position given in a map from the Tintin at Sea book.

You're right that both spots are in the same general area when viewed on a large scale map of the whole Caribbean, but if you were aiming for a small island in a ship, like Haddock and Tintin, 2 degrees difference (the equivalant of the distance between London and Paris) would be quite a big miss!

Yes, wave, the place is above the eastern peninsula of Hispaniola approximately, for a passing moment, when writing my answer, I felt myself very very important, but now I'm better off.

The island would be a lovely place to visit. It sure is a place of pilgrimage for a dedicated tintinologist. BTW do the islanders know they are living in a very famous place, I doubt? I've been in Genova, Buxelles and in the Soviets but I would like to have a real tintin theme-voyage/trip to this Sir Francis' island, Peru and Yukatan.

Has anyone of you gone on a tintin-pilgrimage?


ps. Wave, "tunaguano", a funny shot, I love fish but not that much. :-)

There actually is a Haddock Island off Maine. It's at
43Ëš 53' 17" N
69Ëš 26' 22" W

tuhatkauno

I sort of went on a Tintin in America pilgrimage last summer. I visited the American Museum of Natural History in New York (Which is where Tintin departs from at the end of the book) Visited South Dakota (The approximate location of Redskin City) and on the way back I had a stopover in Chicago. So in a matter of a couple of weeks, I visited three of the places in Tintin in America. I saw somewhere that Herge visited South Dakota in his later years, but I don't know where he went there. I was in the Black Hills, where the famous Mount Rushmore is located, in the southwest corner of the state. It would be cool if that was the place where Herge went (Oh, to trod upon the same ground as Herge!).

Sorry if this is off topic. It's tuhatkauno's fault!

Or more precisely:
20 37 42
68 32 01

Paris Meridian

I've updated the Haddock Island page with a map made in Google Earth.

And more updates:
I added some instructions on experimenting with maps yourself. For example, you can use the following as an address in either Google Maps or Google Earth:
20 37 42 N 68 32 01 W

BTW, I'd love to find a nautical chart of this area.

Just seen the Haddock Island map via Tintin Quiz website.

Hmmmn... does that mean the position and the size of the Haddock Island button Tintin pressed on the globe in the Marlinspike stockroom is erroneous?