Thule Island

Thule Island
	NASA Terra ASTER image of Thule Island
	Location of Thule Island
Geography
Coordinates	59°27′S 27°18′W
Archipelago	South Sandwich Islands
Area	5.5 km2 (2.1 sq mi)
Highest elevation	3,525 ft (1074.4 m)
Administration
	United Kingdom
	South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
Demographics
Population	Uninhabited

Thule Island, also called Morrell Island, is one of the southernmost of the South Sandwich Islands, part of the grouping known as Southern Thule. It is named, on account of its remote location, after the mythical land of Thule, said by ancient geographers to lie at the extreme end of the Earth. The alternative name Morrell Island is after Benjamin Morrell, an American explorer and whaling captain. It was espied by James Cook and his Resolution crew on 31 January 1775 during his attempt to find Terra Australis.[1]

Geography

Thule Island is approximately triangular in shape and 5.5 square miles (14 km²) in area with a long, panhandle-like peninsula, 1.9 miles (3 km), extending to the southeast. Steep slopes ascend to a 0.93 by 1.24 miles (1.5 by 2 km) summit caldera with the peak of Mount Larsen at 710 m (2,329 ft) above sea level. Mount Larsen is named after the Antarctic explorer and whaler Carl Anton Larsen. Off the southeastern tip lies the small islet of Twitcher Rock, the southernmost land on Earth except for Antarctica and offshore islands considered part of Antarctica.

Thule Island is the westernmost of Southern Thule island group, which also encompasses Cook Island and Bellingshausen Island. It is thought that Thule and Cook may have been a larger single island in the past, and there is evidence for a submerged crater between the two. Steam from the summit crater lake and ash on the flank were reported in 1962. Volcanic heat keeps the crater on Thule Island free from ice. The peak elevation is 1,074 metres (3,525 ft).

Argentine occupation

Teniente Esquivel Station, 1955.

Corbeta Uruguay Base, 1981.

Argentina, in order to assert its claim over the South Sandwich Islands, established the summer station Teniente Esquivel at Ferguson Bay on the southeastern coast on January 25, 1955. The station had to be evacuated in January 1956 because of volcanic eruption of Mount Holdgate (so named in 1964) on the neighboring Cook Island to the east. In 1976 it established a military base on Thule Island called Corbeta Uruguay (Port Faraday) in the lee (southern east coast) of the island. The British discovered the presence of the Argentine base the same year but chose to pursue a diplomatic solution to the issue until 1982. The base was occupied by British forces in the aftermath of the Falklands War and eventually destroyed in 1982.[2]

References

Notes

Schalansky, Judith (2010). Atlas of Remote Islands. New York, NY: Penguin. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-14-311820-6.
Stonehouse, Bernard (2002), Encyclopedia of Antarctica and the southern oceans, Wiley, p. 264, ISBN 978-0-471-98665-2

Sources

"Thule Islands" at Global Volcanism Program
LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W., eds. (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union. p. 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7.
volcano.und.edu
Thule Island at OceanDots.com at the Wayback Machine (archived December 23, 2010)

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[1] Schalansky, Judith (2010). Atlas of Remote Islands. New York, NY: Penguin. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-14-311820-6.

[2] Stonehouse, Bernard (2002), Encyclopedia of Antarctica and the southern oceans, Wiley, p. 264, ISBN 978-0-471-98665-2