Andersson Island
| Andersson | |
| Location | |
| Location: | 63°34’59"S, 56°34’59"W |
| Highest point: | 1,427 feet |
| Data | |
Andersson Island is an island lying in the Antarctic Sound which separates the Joinville Island Group from the Trinity Peninsula at the tip of Graham Land in the British Antarctic Territory.
The island is located at the eastern end of the Tabarin Peninsula which is itself the eastern extremity of the Trinity Peninsula.
Discovery and naming
The island was roughly mapped form a distance by the French Antarctic Expedition in 1838, who failed to distinguish this island from its neighbour and gave the name Île Rosamel to what later explorers found to be two islands. The name was given in honour of Vice Admiral Claude Charles Marie du Campe de Rosamel, the French Naval Minister. Today 'Rosamel Island' is the name given to the more northerly of the two islands, also in the Antarctic Sound.
The island served as a waypoint on the second French exploration of the region. Jules Dumont d'Urville put anchor off the island when conditions aboard the Astrolabe and Zelee became overwhelming. The majority of the crew of the Astrolabe had obvious symptoms of scurvy and the main decks were covered by smoke from the ships' fires and bad smells and became unbearable.
The Swedish Antarctic Expedition of 1902 named the island le de l'Uruguay, after the vessel Uruguay, which had rescued the expedition party from Snow Hill Island. However another 'Uruguay Island', after the same ship, was named shortly afterwards in the Wilhelm Archipelago off Graham Land's western coast.
Following a resurvey by the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey from Hope Bay in 1945-47, the island was ultimately renamed to avoid confusion with Uruguay Island in the Wilhelm Archipelago. It was named 'Andersson Island' on 21 November 1949, after Dr Johan Gunnar Andersson (1874-1960), a Swedish geologist who had served as Second-in-command on the Swedish Antarctic Expedition and who had wintered at Hope Bay in 1903.