Kerguelen Islands


The Kerguelen Islands, also known as the Desolation Islands, are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic region. They are among the most isolated places on Earth, with the closest territory being the Heard Island and McDonald Islands territory of Australia located at roughly, and the nearest inhabited territory being Madagascar at more than in distance. The islands, along with Adélie Land, the Crozet Islands, Amsterdam and Saint Paul islands, and France's Scattered Islands in the Indian Ocean, are part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands and are administered as a separate district.
The islands constitute one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large igneous province mostly submerged in the southern Indian Ocean. The main island, Grande Terre, is in area, about three-quarters of the size of Corsica, and is surrounded by a further 300 smaller islands and islets, forming an archipelago of. The climate is harsh and chilly with frequent high winds throughout the year. The surrounding seas are generally rough and they remain ice-free year-round. There are no indigenous inhabitants, but France maintains a permanent presence of 45 to 100 soldiers, scientists, engineers, and researchers. There are no airports on the islands, so all travel to and from the outside world is by ship.

History

Discovery

Before being officially catalogued in 1772, the Kerguelen Islands appear as the "Ile de Nachtegal" on Philippe Buache's 1754 map of the islands of the Southern Ocean. It is possible this early name was after Abel Tasman's ship De Zeeuwsche Nachtegaal. On the Buache map, "Ile de Nachtegal" is located at 43°S, 72°E, about 6° north and 2° east of the actual location of Grande Terre.
The islands were officially discovered by the French navigator Yves-Joseph de Kerguelen-Trémarec on 12 February 1772. The next day, Charles de Boisguehenneuc landed and claimed the island for the French crown. Yves de Kerguelen organised a second expedition in 1773 and arrived at the "baie de l'Oiseau" by December 1773. On 6 January 1774 he commanded his lieutenant, Henri Pascal de Rochegude, to leave a message notifying any passers-by of the two passages and of the French claim to the islands.
Thereafter, a number of expeditions briefly visited the islands, including the third voyage of Captain James Cook in December 1776. Cook verified and confirmed the passage of de Kerguelen by discovering and annotating the message left by the French navigator, calling it Kerguelen Land in his honor. Cook nonetheless claimed the islands for the British Empire.

Sealing era and further exploration

Soon after its discovery, the archipelago was regularly visited by whalers and sealers who hunted the resident populations of whales and seals to the point of near extinction, including fur seals in the 18th century and elephant seals in the 19th century. The sealing era lasted from 1781 to 1922 during which time 284 sealing visits are recorded, nine of which ended when the vessel was wrecked. Modern industrial sealing, associated with whaling stations, occurred intermittently between 1908 and 1956. Since the end of the whaling and sealing era, most of the islands' species have been able to increase their population again. Relics of the sealing period include try pots, hut ruins, graves and inscriptions.
In 1800, the spent eight months sealing and whaling around the islands. During this time Captain Robert Rhodes, her master, prepared a chart of the islands. That vessel returned to London in April 1801 with 450 tons of sea elephant oil.
In 1825, the British sealer John Nunn and three crew members from Favourite were shipwrecked on Kerguelen until they were rescued in 1827 by Captain Alexander Distant during his hunting campaign.
The islands were not completely surveyed until the Ross expedition of 1840.
The Australian James Kerguelen Robinson was the first human born south of the Antarctic Convergence, on board the sealing ship Offley in Gulf of Morbihan, Kerguelen Island on 11 March 1859.
In 1874–1875, British, German, and U.S. expeditions visited Kerguelen to observe the transit of Venus. For the 1874 transit, George Biddell Airy of the U.K. Royal Observatory organised and equipped five expeditions to different parts of the world. Three of these were sent to the Kerguelen Islands and led by Stephen Joseph Perry, who set up his main observation station at Observatory Bay and two auxiliary stations, one at Thumb Peak led by Sommerville Goodridge, and the second at Supply Bay, led by Cyril Corbet. Observatory Bay was also used by the German Antarctic Expedition, led by Erich Dagobert von Drygalski in 1902–1903. In January 2007, an archaeological excavation was carried out at this site.
In 1877 the French started a coal mining operation, but soon abandoned it.

Reoccupation

In the early 1890s, French brothers lobbied the French government to re-assert its original claim to Kerguelen, believing it would make it a suitable area for sheep farming similar to their previous operations in Patagonia. France sent the aviso Eure, under Commander Louis Édouard Paul Lieutard, to the area and on 1 January 1893 formally claimed the island for a second time, which received international recognition and was not contested by the British Empire. The French government granted the Bossière brothers a 50-year lease over the island for the purposes of establishing a sheep-farming colony, although no settlement was attempted until 1908.
In 1901, following the federation of the British colonies in Australia, the new Australian federal government unsuccessfully lobbied the British government to acquire the Kerguelen Islands from France for strategic purposes. The Australian government viewed the islands' natural harbours as suitable for naval operations and believed that the islands could support a colony based around farming, fishing and mining. The British government ultimately rejected the proposal in August 1901, as it did not believe negotiations with France would be successful and did not consider that the islands posed a strategic threat.
In 1908, the French explorer Raymond Rallier du Baty made a privately funded expedition to the island. His autobiographical account of the adventure describes the months that he spent surveying the island and hunting seals to finance his expedition.
In 1924, it was decided to administer the Kerguelen Islands, the islands of Amsterdam and St. Paul, and the Crozet Archipelago from Madagascar; as with all Antarctic territorial claims, France's possession on the continent is held in abeyance until a new international treaty is ratified that defines each claimant's rights and obligations.
The German auxiliary cruiser called at Kerguelen during December 1940. During their stay the crew performed maintenance and replenished their water supplies. This ship's first fatality of the war occurred when a sailor, Bernhard Herrmann, fell while painting the funnel. He is buried in what is sometimes referred to as "the southernmost German war grave" of World War II.
Kerguelen has been continually occupied since 1950 by scientific research teams, with a population of 50 to 100 personnel frequently present. There is also a French satellite tracking station.
Until 1955, the Kerguelen Islands were administratively part of the French Colony of Madagascar and Dependencies. That same year, they collectively became known as Les Terres australes et antarctiques françaises and were administratively part of the French Département d'outre-mer de la Réunion. In 2004 they were permanently transformed into their own entity but having inherited another group of five very remote tropical islands, nocat=true, which are also ruled by France and are dispersed around the island of Madagascar.

Grande Terre

The main island of the archipelago is called La Grande Terre. It measures east to west and north to south.
Port-aux-Français, a scientific base, is along the eastern shore of the Gulf of Morbihan on La Grande Terre. Facilities there include scientific-research buildings, a satellite tracking station, dormitories, a hospital, a library, a gymnasium, a pub, and the chapel of Notre-Dame des Vents.
The highest point is Mont Ross in the Gallieni Massif, which rises along the southern coast of the island and has an elevation of. The Cook Ice Cap, France's largest glacier with an area of about, lies on the west-central part of the island. Overall, the glaciers of the Kerguelen Islands cover just over. Grande Terre has also numerous bays, inlets, fjords, and coves, as well as several peninsulas and promontories. The most important ones are listed below:
There are also a number of notable localities, all on La Grande Terre :
  • Anse Betsy is a former geomagnetic station on Baie Accessible, on the north coast of the Courbet Peninsula. On this site an astronomical and geomagnetic observatory was erected on 26 October 1874 by a German research expedition led by Georg Gustav Freiherr von Schleinitz. The primary goal of this station was the 1874 observation of the transit of Venus.
  • Armor, established in 1983, is located west of Port-aux-Français at the bottom of Morbihan Gulf, for the acclimatization of salmon to the Kerguelen islands.
  • Baie de l'Observatoire is a former geomagnetic observation station, just west of Port-Aux-Français, on the eastern fringe of the Central Plateau, along the northern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan.
  • Cabane Port-Raymond is a scientific camp at the head of a fjord cutting into the Courbet Peninsula from the south.
  • Cap Ratmanoff is the easternmost point of the Kerguelens.
  • La Montjoie is a scientific camp on the south shore of Baie Rocheuse, along the northwestern coast of the archipelago.
  • Molloy is a former observatory west of the present-day Port-Aux-Français, on the northern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan. An American expedition led by G. P. Ryan erected a station at this site on 7 September 1874. That station was also established to observe the 1874 transit of Venus.
  • Port Bizet is a seismographic station on the northeastern coast of Île Longue. This also serves as the principal sheep farm for the island's resident flock of Bizet sheep.
  • Port Christmas is a former geomagnetic station on Baie de l'Oiseau, in the extreme northwest of the Loranchet Peninsula. It was named by Captain James Cook, who re-discovered the islands and who anchored there on Christmas Day, 1776. This is also the place where Captain Cook coined the name "Desolation Islands" in reference to what he saw as a sterile landscape.
  • Port Couvreux, a former attempted permanent settlement based on experimental sheep farming on Baie du Hillsborough, at the southern end of Baleiniers Gulf. Starting in 1912, sheep were raised here to create an economic base for future settlement. However, the attempt failed and the last inhabitants had to be evacuated, and the station abandoned, in 1931. The huts remain, as well as a graveyard with five anonymous graves. These are those of the settlers who were unable to survive in the harsh environment.
  • Port Curieuse, a harbor on the west coast across Île de l'Ouest, was named after the ship La Curieuse, which was used by Raymond Rallier du Baty on his second visit to the islands.
  • Port Douzième is a hut and former geomagnetic station on the southern shore of the Golfe du Morbihan.
  • Port Jeanne d'Arc is a former whaling station founded by a Norwegian whaling company in 1908, and a former geomagnetic station, and lies in the northwestern corner of Presqu'île Jeanne d'Arc, looking across the Buenos Aires passage to Île Longue. The derelict settlement consists of four residential buildings with wooden walls and tin roofs, and a barn. One of the buildings was restored in 1977, and another in 2007.
From 1968 to 1981, a site just east of Port-aux-Français was a launching site for sounding rockets, some for French, American or French-Soviet surveys, but at the end mainly for a Soviet program.