Phoenix Islands
The Phoenix Islands, or Rawaki, are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs that lie east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. They are part of the Republic of Kiribati. Their combined land area is. The only island of any commercial importance is Canton Island. The other islands are Enderbury, Rawaki, Manra, Birnie, McKean, Nikumaroro, and Orona.
The Phoenix Islands Protected Area, established in 2008, is one of the world's largest protected areas and is home to about 120 species of coral and more than 500 species of fish. The Phoenix Islands are uninhabited, except for a few families who live on Canton Island.
Historically, the Phoenix Islands have been considered part of the Gilberts Island group.
Geographically, Baker Island and Howland Island, two unincorporated territories of the United States that lie to the north of the Phoenix Islands, could be considered part of the same island group as the Phoenix Islands. However, politically and for statistical compilation purposes, Howland and Baker are considered part of the group known as the United States Minor Outlying Islands.
The United States once laid claim to all the Phoenix Islands under the 1856 Guano Islands Act. However, when Kiribati became an independent republic in 1979, the United States and Kiribati signed the Treaty of Tarawa, under which the United States released all claims to the Phoenix Islands, which thenceforth became recognized as part of Kiribati.
The Phoenix Islands began to be known by that name sometime around the 1840s, as a generalization from one of the islands in the group, which had been named [|Phoenix Island] earlier in the century.
The Phoenix Islands were the site of the last colonial expansion attempted by the British Empire in the late 1930s.
Geography, flora and fauna
Kanton Island
is the northernmost island in the Phoenix group and the only inhabited one. It is a narrow ribbon of land, enclosing a lagoon of approximately. Kanton is mostly bare coral, covered with herbs, bunch grasses, low shrubs, and a few trees. Its lagoon teems with 153 known species of marine life, including sharks, tuna, stingrays, and eels. Land fauna includes at least 23 bird species, lizards, rats, hermit crabs, and turtles.In the mid-20th century, Kanton had an important trans-Pacific airport and refueling station called Langton, but its importance declined in the late 1950s with the introduction of long-range jet aircraft. After a brief stint as a U.S. missile-tracking station, the airport fell into disuse. However, today, the airport is still there, and it was still home to a small military presence: 20 persons were residing there, mostly living in the buildings erected during the occupation of the island by Great Britain and the United States between 1936 and 1976.
Enderbury Island
is a low, flat, small coral atoll lying east-southeast of Kanton. Its lagoon is rather tiny, comprising only a small percentage of the island's area. Herbs, bunchgrass, morning-glory vines, and a few clumps of trees form the main vegetation on the island, while birds, rats, and a species of beetle are the known fauna. Heavily mined for guano in the late 19th century, Enderbury has seen little human impact following the evacuation of the last four residents in 1942, during World War II.Birnie Island
is a small, flat coral island about in area, measuring long by wide. It contains a tiny lagoon, which has all but dried up. A nesting place for flocks of seabirds, Birnie is devoid of trees and is instead covered with low shrubs and grass. Unlike most of the other Phoenix Islands, Birnie does not appear to have been worked for guano or otherwise exploited by humans. It was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1975.McKean Island
is the northwesternmost island of the Phoenix group. Its area is, devoid of fresh water or trees, though it has a hypersaline lagoon at its center. Carpeted with low herbs and grasses, McKean provides a sanctuary for the world's largest nesting population of lesser frigatebird, with a population of up to 85,000 birds. It was actively worked for guano in the mid-19th century but was abandoned by 1870, and no further use has been made of it.Rawaki Island
, or Phoenix Island, measures approximately by, and covers in area. Its lagoon is shallow and salty, with no connection to the ocean. However, it has several freshwater pools—the only known freshwater wetlands in the Phoenix Islands. Treeless, Rawaki is covered with herbs and grasses, and provides another important landing site for migratory seabirds. Worked for guano from 1859 to 1871, Rawaki was abandoned and no human use seems to have been made of it thereafter.Manra Island
, or Sydney Island, measures approximately. It has a large, salty lagoon with depths reportedly varying between. The island is covered with coconut palms, scrub forest, herbs, and grasses, including the species Tournefortia, Pisonia, Morinda, Cordia, Guettarda, and Scaevola. Manra contains definite evidence of prehistoric inhabitation in the form of at least a dozen platforms and remains of enclosures in the northeast and northwest portions of the island. K. P. Emory, an ethnologist at Honolulu's Bishop Museum, has estimated that two groups of people were present on Manra, one having migrated there from eastern Polynesia, the other from Micronesia. Wells and pits apparently dug by inhabitants were also found.Extensively worked for guano beginning in 1884 by John T. Arundel & Co, Manra was developed into a copra plantation in the early 20th century. In 1938, Manra was selected as one of three atolls to be included in the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, which represented the final expansion of the British Empire. Manra was subsequently plagued by drought and the death of the project's organizer. Due to these events, the effects of World War II, and the declining copra market, the island was abandoned in 1963.
Nikumaroro
, or Gardner Island, is approximately long by wide, enclosing a large central lagoon. Vegetation is profuse, including scrub forests, coconut palms, and herbs. Large quantities of birds nest on the island, which was once the headquarters for the British colonial officer heading up the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, Gerald Gallagher. Gallagher constructed a village on the western end of the atoll, with wide, coral-paved streets, a parade ground, a cooperative store, an administrative center and residence, and a radio shack.Gallagher died on Nikumaroro in 1941, and was buried on the island. Like the other atolls in the settlement project, Nikumaroro was abandoned in 1963 due to the scarcity of fresh water, together with the declining market for the copra that had been produced on the island.
Nikumaroro has appeared in media stories due to a theory that Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan might have landed their plane at low tide on the edge of the atoll's barrier reef during their fateful around-the-world attempt in 1937. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery made several expeditions to Nikumaroro during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, finding possible evidence, but no conclusive proof, for this theory. Investigation and expeditions to the island continue.
Orona Island
, or Hull Island, measures approximately, and, like Kanton, is a narrow ribbon of land surrounding a sizable lagoon with depths of between. Like Manra, it is covered with coconut palms, scrub forest, and grasses; it also contains evidence of prehistoric Polynesian habitation. An ancient stone marae stands on the eastern tip of the island, together with ruins of shelters, graves and other platforms. Unlike Manra, Orona does not seem to have been worked for guano, but it became a coconut plantation and was made a p. It was the British Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme. Residents were evacuated in 1963 due to drought and the declining copra market.History of the islands
Early history
Evidence suggests that Howland Island was the site of a prehistoric settlement, which may have extended down to Rawaki, Canton, Manra, and Orona—probably in the form of a single community using several adjacent islands. Archaeological sites have been discovered on Manra and Orona that suggest there were two distinct groups of settlers, one from eastern Polynesia and one from Micronesia. The hard life on these isolated islands undoubtedly led either to the extinction or emigration of these settled peoples, in much the same way that other islands in the area were abandoned.These ancient settlements were probably founded around 1000 BC when eastern Melanesians are known to have traveled northward across the water. Later settlement by Polynesians and contact with Polynesia is evident from archaeological digs. These have yielded basalt artifacts that originated in Samoa, the Marquesas, and the Cook Islands and were transported to the Phoenix and Line Islands during the 12th–14th centuries AD.
Secondary discovery and mapping of the islands
In 1568, when Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira was commanded to explore the South Pacific, he sailed between the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands without sighting land, ultimately discovering "Isla de Jesus".The oceans of the mid-Pacific and Micronesia opened up to new exploration in the early 19th century as whalers from Europe and the Americas began arriving. An influx of whaling vessels in the 1820s led to the secondary discovery and mapping of the islands between 1821 and 1825. They were the last islands in the Pacific to be fully explored and charted, probably because they were predominantly small, low, and isolated.
While it is clear that early 19th-century whalers were responsible for discovering most of Kiribati in the modern era, it is impossible to confirm exactly who discovered each of the islands due to conflicting reports and inaccurate mapping. Jeremiah N. Reynolds's 1828 report to the American Navy recommended an exploring expedition to the Pacific because "the English charts, and those of other countries are as yet very imperfect. Much of their information has been obtained from loose accounts from whalers who were careless in some instances, and forgetful in others, and which were seized with greediness by the makers of maps and charts, in order to be the first to make these discoveries known."
This proposal came to fruition in the 1840s, when Charles Wilkes led the United States Exploring Expedition, consisting of the and the. The expedition surveyed the islands under the direction of William Hudson.