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Bouvet Island (Norwegian: Bouvetøya, also
historically known as Liverpool Island or Lindsay Island) is an uninhabited sub-antarctic
volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, south-southwest of the Cape of Good
Hope (South Africa). It is a dependent area of Norway and is not subject to the
Antarctic Treaty.
Geography
Bouvet Island is located at
54°26′S,
3°24′E. It is 49 km² in area, 93% of which is covered by glaciers
which block the south and east coasts.[1]
It has no ports or harbors, only offshore
anchorages, and is difficult to approach. The easiest way is with a helicopter
from a ship. The glaciers form a thick ice layer falling in high cliffs into the
sea or onto the black beaches of volcanic sand. The 29.6 km (18.4 miles) of
coastline are often surrounded by an ice pack. The highest point on the island
is called Olavtoppen, whose peak is 780 m (2,559 ft) above sea level. A
lava shelf on the island's west coast, which appeared between 1955 and 1958,
provides a nesting site for birds.
Bouvet Island is the most remote island in the
world. The nearest land is Queen Maud Land, Antarctica, over 1,600 km (1,000
miles) away to the south, which is itself uninhabited.
History
Bouvet Island was discovered on January
1, 1739, by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, who commanded the French
ships Aigle and Marie. However, the island's position was not
accurately fixed having been placed eight degrees to the east, and Bouvet did
not circumnavigate his discovery, so it remained unclear whether it was an
island or part of a continent.
In 1772, Captain James Cook left South
Africa on a mission to find the island. However, when arriving at 54°S, 11°E
where Bouvet had said he sighted the island, nothing was to be seen. Captain
Cook assumed that Bouvet had taken an iceberg for an island, and he abandoned
the search.
The island was not sighted again until 1808,
when it was spotted by one Lindsay, the captain of the Enderby Company whaler
Snow Swan. Though he didn't land, he was the first to correctly fix the
island's position.
The first successful landfall dates to December
1822, when Captain Benjamin Morrell of the sealer Wasp landed, hunting
for seals. He was successful and took several seal skins.
On December 10, 1825, Captain Norris, master of
the Enderby Company whalers Sprightly and Lively, landed on the
island, named it Liverpool Island, and claimed it for the British Crown.
In 1898, the German Valdivia expedition
of Carl Chun visited the island but did not land.
The first extended stay on the island was in
1927, when the Norwegian "Norvegia" crew stayed for about a month; this is the
basis for the territorial claim by Norway, who have named the island Bouvet
Island (Bouvetøya in Norwegian). The island was annexed on December 1, 1927, by
a Royal Norwegian Decree of January 23, 1928, Bouvetøya became a Norwegian
Territory. The United Kingdom waived its claim in favor of Norway the following
year. In 1930 a Norwegian act was passed that made the island a dependent area
subject to the sovereignty of the Kingdom (but not a part of the Kingdom).
In 1964, an abandoned lifeboat was
discovered on the island, along with various supplies; however, the lifeboat's
passengers were never found.[4]
In 1971, Bouvet Island and the adjacent
territorial waters were designated a nature reserve. In the 1950s and 1960s,
there was some interest from South Africa to establish a weather station, but
conditions were deemed to be too hostile. The island remains uninhabited,
although an automated weather station was set up there in 1977 by the
Norwegians.
On September 22, 1979, a satellite recorded a
flash of light (which was later interpreted as having been caused by a nuclear
bomb explosion or natural event such as a meteor) in a stretch of the southern
Indian Ocean between Bouvet Island and Prince Edward Islands. This flash, since
dubbed the Vela Incident, is still not completely resolved.
Despite being uninhabited, Bouvet Island has
the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) .bv, though it is not used.[5]
A handful of amateur radio expeditions have gone to this remote location (call
signs used here begin with 3Y). Bouvet Island falls within the UTC Z time
zone. Atlantic/St_Helena is the zone used in the time zone database.
Bouvet
Island in fiction
- Bouvet is the setting of the 2004 movie
Alien vs. Predator, in which it is referred to using its Norwegian name
"Bouvetøya."
- The island figures prominently in the book
A Grue of Ice by Geoffrey Jenkins.
References
-
LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W. (eds.) (1990). Volcanoes
of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union,
512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7.
-
CIA - The World Factbook - Bouvet Island. CIA (2007-01-14).
-
Worldstats: Providing information about our world!. worldstats.org
(2007-01-14).
- Boudewijn Buch - Eilanden (holland,
1991)
- MISR
Image: Bouvet Island. NASA (2007-01-14).
-
Norid: .bv and .sj domains are not in use. Norid (2007-01-14).
Sites in Bouvet Island :
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