Where Is R'lyeh on a Map?

R'lyeh is one of the few localities on file for which a position was ever recorded, and this office can state it exactly: 47°9′ South, 126°43′ West. Those are the figures in the account of Gustaf Johansen, second mate of the Emma, as reproduced in The Call of Cthulhu, for the coast he and his surviving crewmates raised after taking the Alert. They place it in the open South Pacific, far to the south-east of New Zealand and far from any charted land.

The chain of coordinates

The chronicle gives two positions, and readers sometimes confuse them. The first, 49°51′ South, 128°34′ West, is where the schooner Emma of Auckland met the Alert on 22 March and was sunk. The second, 47°9′ South, 126°43′ West, is where Johansen later raised the island. The Field Survey draws both, and joins them with the route of the voyage; the two points lie a little over three hundred kilometres apart. R'lyeh's own pin carries the exact mark, the firmest on the chart, because the witness supplies the figures himself.

Why it is filed UNCHARTED

An exact coordinate is not the same as a findable place. The press account reproduced in the chronicle notes that no island is known to exist in that part of the ocean, and the testimony indicates that the city surfaces and sinks again with seismic disturbance. The Archive therefore stamps R'lyeh UNCHARTED: the position is on file, but a vessel that sails to it may find only water, and the one crew known to have found anything did so by accident. This office does not recommend a survey.

A note on Point Nemo

The position lies in the same quarter of the ocean as what oceanographers call Point Nemo, the sea position farthest from any land, calculated decades after the chronicle was filed at roughly 48°53′ South, 123°24′ West. On the Field Survey it lies about two hundred miles from R'lyeh's pin. The chart marks it because a reader who sees how near it falls will assume the two are the same place. They are not, and the chronicle does not mention it. This office records the proximity and draws no conclusion from it.

To see it for yourself, open R'lyeh on the interactive map; clicking the pin flies in to the site and opens its record.