Smyley Island

Smyley Island
English Coast (British Antarctic Territory)
Location
Location:	72°39’33"S, 78°11’0"W
Data
Population:	Uninhabited

Smyley Island is the westernmost island within the prescribed bounds of the British Antarctic Territory, its westernmost point being less than less than 1° east of the 80° longitude. The island lies off the west coast of Palmer Land and north of the main body of the Antarctic Continent, along the English Coast of that continent. Its eastern coast is on the Stange Ice Shelf.

The island lies about twelve and a half miles north of Case Island and is caught within the Stange Ice Shelf. Smyley is separated from Alexander Island by the Ronne Entrance: it forms the south-western side of Ronne Entrance, and lies between Carroll Inlet and Stange Sound

The island was seen from the air by United States Antarctic Survey in December 1940 but, locked in the ice, it was not recognized as an island. The name 'Cape Ashley Snow' was applied to ice shelf projecting from the north-west part of the island after Ashley C. Snow (from whom the Snow Nunataks are named), but this name was later changed to 'Cape Smiley' after Captain William Horton Smyley, Master of the sealing ship Ohio from Newport, Rhode Island, who in 1841-42 visited the South Shetland Islands and the Palmer Archipelago, and may have sailed further southward, and who served as the United States' Commercial Agent in the Falkland Islands in 1853. Following air photography by the United States Navy in 1965-66, the name of 'Smyley' was transferred to the island delineated from the photographs.

Outside links

• British Antarctic Survey diary

References

• Gazetteer and Map of The British Antarctic Territory: Smyley Island