reached the Cape, so from da Gama's perspective there was a pressing need that he be told water and meat could be found at St Helena. The fact that nothing seems to have been said about the island, da Gama's scrivener Lopes regarding the island as unknown, again implies da Nova found Ascension but not St Helena. The 2022 paper also reviews cartographic evidence that St Helena and Ascension were known to the Spanish in 1500, before either João da Nova or Estêvão da Gama sailed for India. The suggestion that João da Nova discovered Tristan da Cunha naming it St Helena is discounted. If João da Nova indeed found St Helena, a separate 2015 paper has reviewed another tradition that he did so on 21 May 1502. This date appears to have first been suggested by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten in a book published in Holland in 1596. This described how his ships left St Helena on 21 May 1589, this being both the feast of Saint Helena and Whitsunday. At first sight, this statement seems to be a contradiction - the Roman Catholic Church certainly celebrated Whitsunday that day but their feast-day of Saint Helena was on 18 August. Linschoten's statement did not fit in with the Eastern Orthodox Church either - this faith certainly marked Saint Helena on 21 May but in 1589 celebrated Whitsun a week later, on 28 May. The paper suggested the solution to this apparent paradox was the fact that by the time his book was published in 1596 Linschoten had converted to the Protestant Dutch Reformed Church. This faith celebrated Whitsunday on the same day as Catholics whilst Saint Helena was marked on 21 May, the same day as the Orthodox Church. Quite apart from the fact that the discoverers were Catholics, Linschoten failed to realise the impossibility that the island was named after a Protestant feast-day, it being found more than a decade before the Reformation and start of Protestantism. An alternative discovery date of 3 May on the Catholic feast-day celebrating the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena in Jerusalem, as quoted by Odoardo Duarte Lopes in 1591 and by Sir Thomas Herbert in 1638, is suggested as historically more credible than the Protestant date of 21 May. The paper observes that if da Nova made the discovery on 3 May 1502, he may have been inhibited from