Wiencke Island

Wiencke Island
Palmer Archipelago (British Antarctic Territory)
Luigi peak, Fief Range, Wiencke Island
Location
Location:	64°49’37"S, 63°21’22"W
Area:	26 square miles
Data

Wiencke Island is an island of the British Antarctic Territory, the southernmost of the major islands of the Palmer Archipelago. The island is 16 miles long and between two and 5 miles wide, about 26 square miles in area. It lies between Anvers Island (to the north) and the west coast of Graham Land. Damoy Point Refuge is found on the island.

Description

The rocky island is mostly covered by glaciers, snow and ice. Some small rocky beaches lie on the western and northern sides of the island. There, some grasses, moss and lichens can be found.

There are three mountain ridges. Nemo Peak, 2,835 feet high, is to the northwest; Nipple Peak to the northeast; and Luigi Peak, 4,642 feet high, to the southwest. Luigi Peak is the island's summit also the island has never having been completely surveyed.

Minor islands surround it, such as Breakwater Island, 108 feet high 5 miles north of Cape Astrup, Wiencke's northernmost point. On the south-east coast is Pursuit Point, an Important Bird Area. Near the south-east side is Fridtjof Island, 446 ft (136 m) high, connected to Wiencke by a chain of small rocks and islets. In the vicinity of Cape Willems, the south-easternmost extremity of Wiencke, are the Bob Islands, three in number, of volcanic origin, up to 440 feet high.

History

19th century

The island seems to have been discovered first by Edward Bransfield on board the brig Williams in January 1820, though he named it a cape. In 1829 Henry Foster sailed around the island. In 1873 the German Eduard Dallmann was the first to land on the island, and reported it 'a lonely place'. The island was named by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, 1897–99, under Adrien de Gerlache, for Carl August Wiencke, a Norwegian seaman who fell overboard and lost his life on the expedition.

20th century

Britain set bases up on Deception and in a bay of Wiencke Island in 1944 and another at Hope Bay in 1945, to do weather reporting and to check that there was no German naval activity. Only one of these three bases remains, on in Goudier Island he bay of Port Lockroy, off Jougla Point, near Wiencke Island's south-western end.

An Argentinean light tower was installed in 1947 at Py Point at the southwest end of the Peltier Channel on nearby Doumer Island, and a refuge hut erected in Dorian Bay in 1957, north of Port Lockroy. The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) erected a staging hut, known as the Damoy Point refuge, near this Argentinean refuge in 1975 to act as a base for a temporary summer aircraft ice-strip. This was taken out of use in 1995, and stands restored as a historic site.

Another scientific station (Yelcho) was established in 1962 by the Chilean Navy in South Bay on nearby Doumer Island. An emergency shelter was built in 1957 in Alice Creek 150 m south of Goudier Island on the east coast of the island, followed two years later by a larger hut, for use when maintaining a low-frequency electromagnetic aerial and remote receiving equipment. These two huts were removed in 1996 when derelict while Base 'A' on Goudier Island was restored.

Outside links

("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Wiencke Island)

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