Talk:List of crossings of the Atlantic Ocean

Crossings?
Several of the travels listed are not at all crossings of the Atlantic.

On the other hand, the criteria to include, or not to include, travels seems totally arbitrary or baseless. So the result is both incomplete and excessive.

--81.32.215.87 (talk) 12:02, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

The date 1492 is only significant if you want to be Euro-centric and non-factual. There are plenty of more data on this topic. 24.236.92.77 (talk) 13:26, 21 October 2021 (UTC)


 * 1492 was the beginning of a huge, factual spike in transatlantic travel, so it seems like a very useful dividing line. -- Beland (talk) 08:35, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Uncited material in need of citations
I am moving the following uncited material here until it can be properly supported with inline citations of reliable, secondary sources, per WP:V, WP:CS, WP:IRS, WP:PSTS, WP:BLP, WP:NOR, et al. This diff shows where it was in the article. Nightscream (talk) 19:22, 13 September 2021 (UTC)
 * Way to kill the article; couldn't we have just added a "needs citation/review" tag at the top of the page? Seems to be a useless article now since it deliberately excludes important events like the crossing of the Vikings or Amerigo Vespucci's travels. 75.91.201.251 (talk) 22:09, 3 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I've restored the removed content. Most of the claims are supported by citations on the linked articles, which can just be copied over, and I did that for a bunch. I tagged a few that still need citations. Help would be appreciated verifying the rest. -- Beland (talk) 10:12, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Comment left in article Decmber 2, 2023
Add the first crossing of the Atlantic Ocean on a raft. Henri Beaudout and his crew of four did this in 1956, See Wikipedia entry on L'Egare ll. - moved here. MB 03:15, 27 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Added to this list, drawing from L'Égaré II. -- Beland (talk) 10:17, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

What is a "notable crossing"?
This article is supposedly a list of notable crossings of the Atlantic Ocean. However, notability and crossing have not been defined in the article. "Notability" could be defined by any crossing of the Atlantic that has its own Wikipedia article or similar notability criteria, but notability the lesser of my concerns. My greater concern is that of "crossing": what should this article consider to be a crossing of the Atlantic? Do demonstrate the problems that this lack of definition can cause, which of the following should be counted as a crossing of the Atlantic?


 * 1) Travelling from Norway to Iceland
 * 2) Travelling from Iceland to Greenland
 * 3) Travelling from Norway to Greenland
 * 4) Travelling from Norway to Greenland via Svalbard
 * 5) Travelling from Greenland to Canada
 * 6) Travelling from Greenland to Canada via Hans Island
 * 7) A partially-completed crossing from the UK to the US, such as the RMS Titanic
 * 8) Travelling from mainland Denmark to the Faroe Islands
 * 9) Travelling from Spain to the Faroe Islands
 * 10) Travelling across the Gulf of Mexico
 * 11) Travelling from Newfoundland to Florida
 * 12) Travelling from Maine to Florida
 * 13) Travelling across the Atlantic as part of a larger journey, such as Magellan's
 * 14) Travelling from mainland Portugal to the Azores
 * 15) Travelling from South Africa to Tristan de Cunha
 * 16) Travelling from Tristan de Cunha to the Azores
 * 17) Travelling from one island in the Caribbean to another
 * 18) Travelling from Greenland to Antarctica

These are just a few of many scenarios that are ambiguous as to whether they should count as Atlantic crossings. --MtPenguinMonster (talk) 11:18, 25 November 2023 (UTC)


 * I added some clear criteria to the intro try to sort this out; here's some of my reasoning...
 * In early history, the interesting contacts are between people who arrived in the Americas from the east vs. the west, mostly before that contact became commonplace. In later history, it seems like people are mostly interested in sailing and human-powered crossings, or at least that's what almost all of this list was when I found it. Transatlantic crossing covers the details of mechanized travel, so maybe that's a useful cutoff rather than trying to, say, list all notable vessels that have crossed the Atlantic in modern times.
 * I think people generally think of transatlantic crossings as between the American continent(s) and Europe or Africa. I'd include the islands nearby those continents since some of the most notable voyages are from the British Isles. "Nearby" can be defined as on the continental shelf. To that definition I add Iceland on the European side, because it was settled by Europeans over a thousand years ago, and leaving out the very important Norse voyages from Iceland to North America seems wrong. Greenland is geologically part of North America, and was peopled by humans who migrated from the west, so it's on the Americas side of the transatlantic divide. Travel to other mid-ocean islands doesn't seem notable as "transatlantic" so much as for the broader Age of Discovery or the history of those islands rather than cross-continent contact.
 * I don't think people care much about north-south trips that don't cross the east-west divide; I can't think of any notable ones. I'd exclude Antarctica because that's in the Southern Ocean, and voyages there are well covered by History of Antarctica.
 * I'd include attempted crossings that are otherwise notable. -- Beland (talk) 08:21, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * After seeing some of the material that was moved to the talk page above for sourcing reasons, I've rescoped the article to include powered ships and aircraft. But I've put each type of travel in its own section; they could be spun off later if the list gets too big. -- Beland (talk) 09:18, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Mmm, I thought the Antilles were on the continental shelf, but that might not be true; I'll explicitly add Caribbean. -- Beland (talk) 22:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Mmm, I thought the Antilles were on the continental shelf, but that might not be true; I'll explicitly add Caribbean. -- Beland (talk) 22:46, 29 February 2024 (UTC)

Missing entries
There are a lot of notable crossings made by people on the List of explorers. I've added those marked as "15th century" and earlier, but "15th/16th century" and later could use some attention. Also missing are many crossings made by the founders or founding groups of various colonies in the Americas and Caribbean. (Though some of those foundations were intra-American rather than transatlantic, like St. Augustine, Florida.) -- Beland (talk) 11:19, 29 February 2024 (UTC)