Where Is Gilligan's Island Located? Well, It's Complicated

TV audiences everywhere know the premise of Sherwood Schwartz's 1964 sitcom "Gilligan's Island" from its earworm theme song. Five passengers, on vacation in Hawai'i, book a three-hour boat tour on board the S.S. Minnow, along with the ship's captain and first mate. The ship ran into some bad weather, was blown far off course, and crash-landed on an uncharted tropical island. The seven stranded castaways, all from varied class backgrounds, had to comedically survive. The series only lasted three seasons but burned itself deep into the collective unconsciousness. Jung would be proud.

Thanks to the gods of syndication, "Gilligan's Island" remained on the air almost perpetually for decades. Several generations were raised on "Gilligan's" reruns, and audiences can still see it to this very day on streaming services like Tubi.

But, like anything that can be watched hundreds of times, "Gilligan's Island" began to buckle under sheaves of unwarranted scrutiny. After a while, viewers may begin to ask why the castaways had so many changes of clothes if they were only going on a three-hour tour. Or how the Professor (Russell Watson) could build radios and hot air balloons on the island, but didn't have the engineering skill to patch up a hole in the Minnow. 

Such overthinking has, perhaps amusingly, led some to posit where on Earth Gilligan's island might actually be. Some on-camera lines of exposition (compiled by MeTV) have pointed to the island's actual latitude and longitude, although those numbers seem to change periodically. Other resourceful investigators on Reddit have used the speed and power of the Minnow to calculate a radius of where the Island may be. 

MeTV pointed out that in the episode "X Marks the Spot" (January 30, 1965), the island's coordinates were given as 140 degrees latitude by 10 degrees longitude. These coordinates, of course, don't exist, so it could have been the writers merely playing a little game with viewers, very much the same way the writers of "The Simpsons" are coy about the location of Springfield. Indeed, different coordinates were given in the episode "Big Man on a Little Stick" (February 20, 1965), which aired only a few weeks later. In that episode, the island's coordinates were given as 10 degrees latitude by 110 degrees longitude. 

Those exact numbers would put the island off the coast of Vietnam in the South China Sea, however. Had the writers said 10 degrees latitude by negative 110 degrees longitude, that would put Gilligan's island back in the North Pacific, many miles off the coast of Mexico. That, at least, is somewhat feasible, even if it's unlikely. 

In the episode "It's a Bird, It's a Plane" (March 27, 1967), Gilligan (Bob Denver) flies a jet pack (!) away from the island and is spotted by a passing naval plane. The pilot reports what he saw, saying it was spotted 250 miles south of Hawai'i. Compiling the two previous episodes' information may have audiences coming up with 10 degrees latitude by negative 140 degrees longitude as the possible location, but that is much further than 250 miles southeast of Hawai'i. 

The next question, of course, is whether or not the Minnow could have made it that far. Redditors, luckily, have our back on that one.

Resourceful fans have examined the S.S. Minnow as it appears in the show's title sequence and found that it is a 37-foot Wheeler Express Cruiser, built in 1960. Sherwood Schwartz found the ship while shooting the "Gilligan's Island" opening in Hawai'i, so Wheeler Express Cruisers were indeed being used for brief boat tours in 1964. Other fans on Reddit have found that the Minnow departed Hawai'i from the Ala Wai Yacht Harbor Marina in Honolulu, and some were generous enough to include that harbor's coordinates: 21.28 degrees latitude by negative 57.84 degrees longitude. 

If the Minnow left Ala Wai moving at a 1960 Wheeler Express' top speed of 14 knots and moved away from Hawai'i for 90 minutes (and, to be generous, was given a little boost by a 6-knot ocean current), it would be 30 nautical miles from land. If the Minnow was then hit a category one hurricane, which typically has winds of 85 miles per hour, and the storm blew through the night, the Minnow would be pushed an additional 300 nautical miles away from shore. One nautical mile, for the layperson, is about 1.15 miles. Then, if the Minnow were to drift on 6-knot ocean currents for a spell — the text of the show did indeed have the ship unmoored for three days — it could have drifted a full 432 additional nautical miles away from Hawai'i. All told, that's about 762 nautical miles from Hawai'i. 

By those calculations, the Minnow would have likely ended up along the Hawai'ian archipelago, not even as far away as Midland Island. Gilligan's Island was not in the South Pacific.