Invisible ships

Imagine seeing something so new and strange that your brain can't even believe it's there! That's kind of what the 'invisible ships' story is about. It's an old idea that says when big ships from far away first arrived in places like America or Australia, the people who lived there couldn't see them because they were so different from anything they'd ever seen before.

It’s like trying to imagine a dinosaur when you’ve only ever seen tiny lizards!

This idea mostly comes from a story written down by a man named Joseph Banks a very, very long time ago. He was on a ship called the HMS Endeavour. When they sailed near a place called Botany Bay, he wrote that the people on land didn't seem very surprised at first.

But the story got a bit twisted over time, and people started saying the natives literally couldn't see the ships at all, which isn't quite what happened.

Even though it's a cool story, scientists and historians agree that people back then could definitely see the ships! Their eyes would have seen them, but maybe they were confused or didn't know what to think. The idea that people couldn't see them is more like a myth or a legend that some people like to talk about, especially in movies and books.

It's fun to imagine, but it's not how our eyes and brains work.

So, while ships aren't really invisible, this story is a fun way to think about how different things can seem when you see them for the first time. It reminds us that the world is full of amazing and surprising things, and how we understand them can change over time. It’s a great story to share with your friends about how people used to think!