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Inaccessible Island

Coordinates: 37°18′S 12°41′W / 37.30°S 12.68°W / -37.30; -12.68
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This article is about the South Atlantic island. For the other islands, see Inaccessible Island (disambiguation).
Inaccessible Island
Map showing Inaccessible Island and nearby Tristan da Cunha and Nightingale Islands.
Inaccessible Island's location in relation to Tristan da Cunha
Inaccessible Island is located in South Atlantic
Inaccessible Island
Geography
LocationSouth Atlantic Ocean
Coordinates37°18′S 12°41′W / 37.30°S 12.68°W / -37.30; -12.68
ArchipelagoTristan da Cunha
Area12.65 km2 (4.88 sq mi)
Administration
St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha
TypeNatural
Criteriavii, x
Designated1995 (41st session)
Reference no.740
Designated20 November 2008
Reference no.1869[1]
NASA Terra ASTER image of Inaccessible Island

Inaccessible Island is an extinct volcano, last active six million years ago, with Cairn Peak reaching 449 m (1,473 ft).[2] The island is 12.65 km2 (4.88 sq mi) in area, rising out of the South Atlantic Ocean 31 km (19 mi) south-west of Tristan da Cunha. Inaccessible Island is fringed with sheer sea cliffs but can be landed on via a few boulder beaches. Generations of sailors were wary of the difficult landings and inhospitable terrain. Inaccessible Island has been without permanent inhabitants since 1873.

Inaccessible Island is part of the archipelago of Tristan da Cunha, which is part of the overseas territory of the United Kingdom known as Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. Tristan da Cunha itself is accessible only by sea via a seven-day sail from Cape Town, South Africa, by landing during the 60 days of the year that the harbor allows for access to the island.

Along with Gough Island, Inaccessible Island is a protected wildlife reserve and both make up the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gough and Inaccessible Islands. Inaccessible Island is home to the endemic Inaccessible Island rail, the world's smallest extant flightless bird.

Geography

The island sits approximately 17 nautical miles (31 km; 20 mi) to the southwest of the main island of the Tristan da Cunha archipelago. Mostly desolate and inhospitable, the island has one small landing site named Port David on the northwesternmost point.

History

Inaccessible Island was discovered in January 1656 during a voyage by ’t Nachtglas ("the night glass"), a Dutch ship under the command of Jan Jacobszoon,[3] 146 years after Tristan da Cunha was first sighted by Portuguese sailors. Jacobszoon originally named it "Nachtglas" island.

There are two explanations for the name "Inaccessible" island. One is that on maps the newly found island was referred to as "inaccessible" because the Dutch crew who landed were not able to reach its interior.[4] The other claims that French captain d'Etcheverry renamed the island in 1778 after not being able to land.[2][5] In 1803, US sealers led by Amasa Delano made landfall on the island.[3]

Northern rockhopper penguins, from an engraving after a photograph, published in a book by the naturalist aboard HMS Challenger

The Stoltenhoff brothers, who arrived on Inaccessible from Germany in 1871, lived there for two years intending to make a living sealing and selling their wares to passing traders, though such trade was minimal. Due to the scarcity of food, they were "overjoyed" to be rescued in 1873 during HMS Challenger's visit to examine the flora and fauna there.[6] The South African author Eric Rosenthal chronicled the Stoltenhoffs' adventure in 1952.[7] The nearby Stoltenhoff Island is named after the brothers.

In 1922, the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition's ship, the Quest, stopped by Inaccessible briefly, and on-board naturalist Hubert Wilkins discovered a bird later named (after him) the Wilkins finch (Nesospiza wilkinsi). In 1938, the Norwegian Scientific Expedition spent three weeks on the island, during which time they managed to gain access to the plateau and extensively catalogued plants, birds, and rocks. Another attempt at mapping the island was made during the Royal Society's expedition of 1962 to Tristan da Cunha, which took scientists to Inaccessible Island. Like many other explorers before them, the scientists were not able to reach the interior of the island.

Inaccessible Island was declared a nature reserve under the Tristan da Cunha Conservation Ordinance of 1976. Tristan islanders, however, were still permitted to harvest seabirds from the island. In a 1982 expedition (October 16, 1982 – February 10, 1983), students and faculty of Denstone College in England made detailed maps of the island, studied its flora, fauna, and geology, and carried out a marking programme on more than 3,000 birds.[8]

In 1997, Inaccessible Island's territorial waters out to 22 km (14 mi) were declared a nature reserve under the Tristan da Cunha Conservation Ordinance of 1976. Currently, only guides from Tristan are allowed to take visiting cruise ships to Inaccessible; indeed, most trips to the island are now made at the request of expatriates. In 2004 Inaccessible Island was added to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Gough Island to create a new site of Gough and Inaccessible Islands.

Shipwrecks

At least three confirmed shipwrecks have occurred off the coast of Inaccessible Island. The first was Blenden Hall, a British ship which set sail in 1821 with 54 passengers and crew aboard with destination Bombay. Captain Alexander Grieg intended to sail past Saint Helena, but adverse currents carried her to Tristan da Cunha. She got caught in seaweed and on 22 July drifted aground on Inaccessible Island. All but two of those aboard survived the shipwreck.[9] They spent the next four months subsisting on wild celery, seals, penguins, and albatross. They managed to build a boat some months later. The first attempt to sail to Tristan failed, resulting in the loss of six people; but the second attempt alerted the Tristanians to their plight. The remainder were then brought to Tristan, where the brig Nerina arrived about two months later and took most to Cape Town, South Africa.[9]

The other two shipwrecks are the wreck of Shakespeare at Pig Beach in 1883, and Helen S Lea at North Point in 1897.[citation needed]

Flora and fauna

See also: Wildlife of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

When Corporal William Glass and his family became the first settlers at Tristan da Cunha in 1816, goats and pigs were brought to Inaccessible Island to serve as a source of food. Some domestic animals remained for at least 57 years and helped to keep the Stoltenhoff brothers alive during their expedition, but they have now died out. Cattle, sheep, and dogs were also introduced to the island at various points in the island's history, but none remain.

No land mammals, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies, or snails have been found at Inaccessible. The island does have 64 native plant species, including 20 types of flowering plants and 17 species of ferns. In addition, 48 invertebrate species exist on the island, 10 of which were introduced.[10] Subantarctic fur seals and southern elephant seals have also been seen at the island in increasing numbers, and cetaceans live in the surrounding waters most notably southern right whales and resident population of dusky dolphins.

Birds

Inaccessible rail

Inaccessible is perhaps best known for the Inaccessible Island rail, the world's smallest living flightless bird.[11][12][13] The island has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International as a breeding site for seabirds and its endemic landbirds. Birds for which the IBA is significant include northern rockhopper penguins (up to 27,000 breeding pairs), Tristan albatrosses (2–3 pairs), sooty albatrosses (200 pairs), Atlantic yellow-nosed albatrosses (1,100 pairs), broad-billed prions (up to 500,000 pairs), soft-plumaged petrels (up to 50,000 pairs), spectacled petrels, great shearwaters (up to 2 million pairs), little shearwaters (up to 50,000 pairs), white-faced storm petrels (up to 50,000 pairs), white-bellied storm petrels (up to 50,000 pairs), Antarctic terns, Inaccessible rails (up to 5,000 pairs), Tristan thrushes and Inaccessible buntings.[14]

Economy

Inaccessible Island has been used by the islanders of Tristan da Cunha for several economic purposes. The island has guano deposits and eggs, but due to the difficulty of traveling about the island, the islanders have generally chosen to go to Nightingale Island instead.

  • Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket alluded to Nightingale Island, Inaccessible Island, and Tristan da Cunha.
  • In Patrick O'Brian's The Thirteen Gun Salute (1989), pp. 120–29, Captain Aubrey's ship Diane, in a dead calm, is carried toward Inaccessible Island by the inshore current. One of the sailors recounts the wreck of a whaling ship that he witnessed when it was lost with all hands in similar conditions. Only a fortunate breeze saves Aubrey's ship. The episode is depicted in the cover painting of the book showing the towering cliffs plunging directly into the sea.
  • "Sea Lion", the pseudonym of "a serving naval officer" (Geoffrey Martin Bennett), wrote The Phantom Fleet (1946), a novel that was predicated on the supposition that Inaccessible Island contained a natural harbour, the entrance to which was concealed from the sea. The antagonists were assembling a fleet of obsolescent warships in this harbour, with the intention of striking a coup de main leading to world domination, a scheme foiled by the derring-do of a naval officer and the guns of the Royal Navy.
  • Eric Newby passed within sight of Inaccessible Island on his 1938/1939 voyage from Ireland to Australia aboard Moshulu, as chronicled in his books The Last Grain Race and Learning the Ropes. Inaccessible Island was the only land the crew saw on the voyage, until reaching Australia, and was therefore a cause for some excitement.
  • Daniel Suarez's 2014 novel Influx refers to this island as the location of the underground prison 'Hibernity'.
View of Nightingale and Inaccessible Islands from the sea. Left to right: Nightingale Island, Middle Island, Stoltenhoff Island, Inaccessible Island.

See also

References

  1. ^ "Inaccessible Island". Ramsar Sites Information Service. Retrieved 25 April 2018.
  2. ^ a b "Inaccessible Island". Tristandc.com. Retrieved 2013-08-06.
  3. ^ a b R. K. Headland (1989). Chronological List of Antarctic Expeditions and Related Historical Events. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-30903-5.
  4. ^ "History of Inaccessible Island, South Atlantic Ocean". archive.is. Archived from the original on 2012-06-29. Retrieved 2014-07-24.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  5. ^ Édouard Ducéré, Histoire maritime de Bayonne: Les corsaires sous la̓ncien régime (Bayonne, 1895:307-24) reproduces the sieur d'Etcheverry's manuscript narrative of his voyage to Moluccas in 1770 in the Etoile du Matin and mentions a second voyage in 1772.
  6. ^ A Naturalist on the "Challenger", H. N. Moseley. Page 116. Macmillan and Co., 1879. Fetched from archive.org on 3 June 2009.
  7. ^ Rosenthal, Eric (1952) Shelter from the Spray, Cape Town, South Africa: Howard Timmins
  8. ^ Denstone Expedition to Inaccessible Island: Denstonian Supplement (Autumn 1983), page 2.
  9. ^ a b Lloyd's List №5692.
  10. ^ "Inaccessible Island - Wildlife and Plantlife". University of Central Lancashire. 2002. Archived from the original on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2007-12-21.
  11. ^ Stervander, Martin; Ryan, Peter G.; Melo, Martim; Hansson, Bengt (2019-01-01). "The origin of the world's smallest flightless bird, the Inaccessible Island Rail Atlantisia rogersi (Aves: Rallidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 130: 92–98. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2018.10.007. PMID 30321695.
  12. ^ "Birds Ringed on Inaccessible Island". University of Central Lancashire. 2002. Archived from the original on 2007-09-26. Retrieved 2007-12-21.
  13. ^ Laskow, Sarah (November 2, 2018). "How Did the World's Smallest Flightless Bird Get to Inaccessible Island? The first scientists to describe the animal thought it might have walked". Atlas Obscura. Pocket worthy Stories to fuel your mind. Retrieved June 14, 2020. On this one tiny island, there is a thriving population of thousands of what we'll now call Laterallus rogersi, but they are considered vulnerable to extinction.
  14. ^ "Inaccessible Island". Important Bird Areas factsheet. BirdLife International. 2012. Retrieved 2012-10-26.
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