text: St Brendan, an Irish monastic saint, celebrating Mass on the back of a whale, from Caspar Plautius's Novo Typis Transacta Navigatio (1621). The Voyage of St Brendan is thought to have taken place in the sixth century. It was a search for the 'Promised Land of the Saints', which well into the 17th century was designated cartographically as being near the coast of Newfoundland