Atlantis (Stiefel)

Atlantis was a planned island state that Werner Stiefel (1921-2006), President and CEO of Stiefel Medicinal Soap Co. (later Stiefel Laboratories), sought to establish in the Caribbean Sea during the late 1960s into the early 1970s, first in the Silver Shoals, a reef some 85 miles (136 km) north of Hispaniola, and later the Misteriosa Bank, an undersea rise some 115 miles (185 km) west of the Cayman Islands, in both cases plotting to artificially create islands on which to build the new state.

The first proposed island was to be raised and developed through Operation Atlantis, a program first centered in Saugerties, Ulster Co., New York in 1968, which constructed and launched a ferrocement boat that ultimately sank during a hurricane, and afterward at Tortuga Island, a Haitian possession, though the would-be Atlanteans were forced to abandon their plans there as well. After the failure of Operation Atlantis, Stiefel sought to have an oil rig towed to the Misteriosa Bank, but, as with the earlier ferrocement boat, this too was wrecked in a hurricane and sunk into the sea.

Official Publications

 * &mdash; Stevens was, in fact, Stiefel
 * &mdash; biweekly newspaper, continued to be published into the 1970s