James Churchward (27 February 1851 – 4 January 1936) was a British occult writer, inventor, engineer, and fisherman. Churchward is most notable for proposing the existence of a lost continent, called "Mu," in the Pacific Ocean. His writings on Mu are considered to be pseudoscience. Life Churchward was born in Bridestow, Okehampton, Devon at Stone House to Henry and Matilda (née Gould) Churchward. James had four brothers and four sisters. In November 1854, his father Henry died and the family moved in with Matilda's parents in the hamlet of Kigbear, near Okehampton. Census records indicate the family moved to London when James was 18, after his maternal grandfather George Gould died. His younger brother Albert Churchward (1852–1925) became a Masonic author. Churchward went out to Southeast Asia, becoming a tea planter in Sri Lanka. He immigrated to the US in the 1890s. In Churchward's biography, entitled My Friend Churchey and His Sunken Continent, he was said to have discussed "Mu" with Augustus Le Plongeon and his wife in the 1890s. in the United States, Churchward patented NCV (nickel, chrome, vanadium) steel, which was used to manufacture armor plating to protect ships during World War I. He also developed other steel alloys. After a patent-infringement settlement in 1914, Churchward retired to his 7+ acre estate on Lake Wononskopomuc in Lakeville, Connecticut, to think more about questions he had from his Pacific travels. At the age of 75, he published The Lost Continent of Mu: Motherland of Man (1926). He claimed this proved the existence of a lost continent, called Mu, in the Pacific Ocean. Claims and hypothesis According to Churchward, Mu "extended from somewhere north of Hawaii to the south as far as the Fijis and Easter Island." He claimed Mu was the site of the Garden of Eden and the home of 64,000,000 inhabitants – known as the Naacals. Its civilisation, which flourished 50,000 years before Churchward's day, was technologically more advanced than his own. He said the ancient civilisations of India, Babylon, Persia, Egypt, and the Mayas were the decayed remnants of Mu's colonies. Churchward claimed to have gained his knowledge of this lost land after befriending an Indian priest, who taught him to read an ancient dead language (spoken by only three people in all of India). The priest disclosed the existence of several ancient tablets, written by the Naacals. He allowed Churchward to see these records after