Rothschild Island
| Rothschild Island | |
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| Location: | 69°34’60"S, 72°29’34"W |
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| Population: | Uninhabited |
Rothschild Island is an island 24 miles long in the British Antarctic Territory, lying some five miles west of the north part of Alexander Island in the north entrance to Wilkins Sound.
It is mainly ice covered but surmounted by prominent peaks of Desko Mountains
The island forms the west side of Lazarev Bay and is bounded by Wilkins Ice Shelf to south-east.
The island was sighted by Bellinghausen's Russian expedition in January 1821 and was roughly charted as an island by the French Antarctic Expedition of 1908-10, in January 1909. Charcot, leading the expedition, named the island after Baron Edouard de Rothschild (1868-1949), head of the Rothschild banking family of France and president of de Rothschild Frères]
In subsequent exploration by the British Graham Land Expedition in 1934-1937, the feature was believed to be a mountain connected to Alexander Island, but its status as an island was reaffirmed by the United States Antarctic Service in 1939-1941, who photographed and roughly mapped the island from the air. It was mapped in detail from air photos taken by the Ronne Antarctic Research Expedition of 1947-1948, by Searle of the Falkland Islands Dependencies Survey in 1960, and from U.S. satellite imagery taken in 1974.
References
- Gazetteer and Map of The British Antarctic Territory: Rothschild Island