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Thule Island

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Coordinates:59°26′S27°23′W / 59.44°S 27.38°W /-59.44; -27.38

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Island in the Southern Thule group of the South Sandwich Islands

Not to be confused withThule Islands orTule Island.

Thule Island
Geography
NASA Terra ASTER image of Thule Island
Location of Thule Island
Coordinates	59°26′S27°23′W / 59.44°S 27.38°W /-59.44; -27.38
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 calledMorrell Island, is one of the southernmost of theSouth Sandwich Islands, part of the grouping known asSouthern Thule. It is named, on account of its remote location, after the mythical land ofThule, said by ancient geographers to lie at the extreme end of the Earth. The alternative name Morrell Island is afterBenjamin Morrell, an American explorer and whaling captain. The island was espied byJames Cook and hisResolution crew on 31 January 1775 during his attempt to findTerra Australis.^[1]

Geography

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Map of South Sandwich Islands showing location of Thule Island.

Thule Island is roughly triangular in shape and 14 square kilometres (5+1⁄2 sq mi) in area with a long, panhandle-like peninsula calledHewison Point, three kilometres (2 mi), extending to the southeast. Steep slopes ascend to a1.5-by-2-kilometre (1 by1+1⁄4 mi) summitcaldera with the peak ofMount Larsen at 710 m (2,329 ft) above sea level. Mount Larsen is named after the Antarctic explorer and whalerCarl Anton Larsen. On the southwestern end liesWasp Point. Off Hewison Point lies the small islet ofTwitcher Rock, the southernmost land on Earth (with the two islets offCook Island) outside theAntarctic Circle.^[2]

Thule Island is the westernmost ofSouthern Thule island group, which also encompasses Cook Island andBellingshausen 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 summitcrater 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).

Twitcher Rock

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Twitcher Rock is a rock in the southern part ofDouglas Strait, 55 meters high and 140 to 150 meters in diameter, lying 0.7 nautical miles (1.3 km) east ofHewison Point, the southeast point of Thule island. Discovered by a Russian expedition underFabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen in 1820, it was charted in 1930 byDI personnel on the British shipDiscovery II. They named it forJohn Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, who was popularly known by the nicknameJemmy Twitcher.With the two islets offCook Island, it is the southernmost land on Earth outside theAntarctic Circle.^{[citation needed]}

Argentine occupation

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Argentina, in order to assert its claim over the South Sandwich Islands, established the summer station "Teniente Esquivel" (es) atFerguson Bay on the southeastern coast on 25 January 1955. The station had to be evacuated in January 1956 because ofvolcanic eruption ofBristol Island to the north. In 1976 it established a military base on Thule Island calledCorbeta 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 the breakout of theFalklands War in 1982. The base was occupied by British forces in the aftermath of the war and eventually destroyed later that year.^[3]