Anvers Island or Antwerp Island or Antwerpen Island or Isla Amberes is a high, mountainous

island An island or isle is a piece of land, distinct from a continent, completely surrounded by water. There are continental islands, which were formed by being split from a continent by plate tectonics, and oceanic islands, which have never been ...

long, the largest in the

Palmer Archipelago Palmer Archipelago, also known as Antarctic Archipelago, Archipiélago Palmer, Antarktiske Arkipel or Palmer Inseln, is a group of islands off the northwestern coast of the Antarctic Peninsula. It extends from Tower Island in the north to Anvers ...

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. It was discovered by

John Biscoe John Biscoe (28 April 1794 – 1843) was an English mariner and explorer who commanded the first expedition known to have sighted the areas named Enderby Land and Graham Land along the coast of Antarctica. The expedition also found a number of is ...

in 1832 and named in 1898 by the

Belgian Antarctic Expedition The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–1899 was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region. Led by Adrien de Gerlache de Gomery aboard the RV ''Belgica'', it was the first Belgian Antarctic expedition and is considered the fir ...

under

Adrien de Gerlache Baron Adrien Victor Joseph de Gerlache de Gomery (; 2 August 1866 – 4 December 1934) was a Belgian officer in the Belgian Royal Navy who led the Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897–99. Early years Born in Hasselt in eastern Belgium as t ...

after the province of

Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...

Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...

. It lies

south-west The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A ''compass rose'' is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each ...

Brabant Island Brabant Island is the second largest island of the Palmer Archipelago within the British Antarctic Territory, lying between Anvers Island and Liège Island. Brabant Island is long north-south, wide, and rises to in Mount Parry. The interi ...

at the south-western end of the group. The south-western coastline of the island forms part of the

Southwest Anvers Island and Palmer Basin Southwest Anvers Island and Palmer Basin is a 3275 km2 Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA 7). It lies towards the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula, encompassing the south-western coastline of Anvers Island, in the Palmer Archipe ...

Antarctic Specially Managed Area An Antarctic Specially Managed Area (ASMA) is a protected area on the continent of Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by t ...

(ASMA 7). Cormorant Island, an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

, lies 1 km off the south coast. There is a small science outpost called Palmer Station on the south end of Anvers island since the late 1960s; it is the smallest and farthest north of three the U.S. has on the continent. It is staffed by a few dozen people mostly doing marine and biology research, and is usually resupplied by ship as it has no regular airport.

Palmer Station

The Palmer Station on Anvers Island is located at () and is Antarctica's only U.S. station north of the

Antarctic Circle The Antarctic Circle is the most southerly of the five major circles of latitude that mark maps of Earth. The region south of this circle is known as the Antarctic, and the zone immediately to the north is called the Southern Temperate Zone. So ...

. Construction finished in 1968. Around 50 people can inhabit Palmer Station at one time. The station is named for Nathaniel B. Palmer, likely to have been one of the first three persons to see Antarctica. There are science labs in the station, as well as a dock. The first Palmer station was built in 1965 on the small and nearby

Amsler island Amsler Island is a small island off the south coast of Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago of Antarctica. It sits between Loudwater Cove and Arthur Harbour. The island is a roughly triangular rocky plot of granite land approximately long ...

, and it was left standing till the 1990s.

Former British Antarctic Survey station

On Anvers Island, the

British Antarctic Survey The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is the United Kingdom's national polar research institute. It has a dual purpose, to conduct polar science, enabling better understanding of list of global issues, global issues, and to provide an active prese ...

built and operated a station (Base N) for the purpose of survey and geology. It consisted of a

hut A hut is a small dwelling, which may be constructed of various local materials. Huts are a type of vernacular architecture because they are built of readily available materials such as wood, snow, stone, grass, palm leaves, branches, clay, hid ...

and was occupied from February 27, 1955, until January 10, 1958. In 1958, the station was closed when local work was completed. Its hut was loaned to the U.S. Government on July 2, 1963, which converted it into a biological laboratory in January 1965 for use by American scientists at the nearby

Palmer Station Palmer Station is a United States research station in Antarctica located on Anvers island (aka Antwerp Island), the only U.S. station on the continent located north of the Antarctic Circle. The first Palmer was built in 1965, but the current sit ...

. The British station was open in support of an air facility from 1969 until 1971. It was destroyed by fire on December 28, 1971, while being renovated by the British Antarctic Survey. Debris was removed by the members of the

US Antarctic Program The United States Antarctic Program (or USAP; formerly known as the United States Antarctic Research Program or USARP and the United States Antarctic Service or USAS) is an organization of the United States government which has a presence in the ...

in 1990/1991. Only concrete foundations remain. A skiway was in use from 1969 to 1973. The air operations were transferred to Adelaide (Station T) in 1973 when the skiway deteriorated. The skiway remained intermittently in use until November 15, 1993.

Ship aground

On 11 February 1972 the Lindblad Explorer ran aground near La Plaza Point, Antarctica. She was towed to

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

, Argentina and then to

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality is the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 116,000 as of January 2020, following th ...

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

for repairs. On 28 January 1989 the

ARA Bahía Paraíso ARA ''Bahía Paraíso'' was an Argentine Navy auxiliary ship that sank in 1989, from Palmer Station at Arthur Harbor, Antarctica, resulting in a oil spill. Construction and design ''Bahía Paraíso'' was ordered by the Argentine Navy on 27 Febr ...

sank off Palmer Station and Anvers.

D'Abnour Bay

D'Abnour Bay is a small

bay A bay is a recessed, coastal body of water that directly connects to a larger main body of water, such as an ocean, a lake, or another bay. A large bay is usually called a ''gulf'', ''sea'', ''sound'', or ''bight''. A ''cove'' is a small, ci ...

east-southeast of

Cape Gronland A cape is a clothing accessory or a sleeveless outer garment of any length that hangs loosely and connects either at the neck or shoulders. They usually cover the back, shoulders, and arms. They come in a variety of styles and have been used thr ...

in northern Anvers Island,

. First charted by the

French Antarctic Expedition The French Antarctic Expedition is any of several French expeditions in Antarctica. 1837–1840 In 1837, during an 1837–1840 expedition across the deep southern hemisphere, Captain Jules Dumont d'Urville sailed his ship ''Astrolabe'' alo ...

(1903–05) under

J.B. Charcot Jean-Baptiste Étienne Auguste Charcot, better known in France as Commandant Charcot, (15 July 1867 in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris – 16 September 1936 at sea (30 miles north-west of Reykjavik, Iceland), was a French scientist, medical doctor ...

, who named the bay for French naval officer Contre-amiral Richard d'Abnour.

Geology

The Anvers-Melchior Islands

Tectonic Block A tectonic block is a part of the Earth's crust that can be treated as a solid rigid crustal block or lithospheric section. A tectonic block may be bounded by faults. It may move from one place to another because of a tectonic shift, and they m ...

includes the northwest portion of Anvers Island and the

Melchior Islands The Melchior Islands are a group of many low, ice-covered islands lying near the center of Dallmann Bay between Brabant Island and Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica. They were first seen but left unnamed by a German expedition ...

offshore. The block is bounded on the southeast by the SW-NE trending

strike-slip In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

Fournier Fault. The block is composed of a volcanic suite which may correspond to the Antarctic Peninsula

Volcanic A volcano is commonly defined as a vent or fissure in the crust of a planetary-mass object, such as Earth, that allows hot lava, volcanic ash, and gases to escape from a magma chamber below the surface. On Earth, volcanoes are most often fo ...

Group A group is a number of persons or things that are located, gathered, or classed together. Groups of people * Cultural group, a group whose members share the same cultural identity * Ethnic group, a group whose members share the same ethnic iden ...

Granite Granite ( ) is a coarse-grained (phanerite, phaneritic) intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly coo ...

diorite Diorite ( ) is an intrusive rock, intrusive igneous rock formed by the slow cooling underground of magma (molten rock) that has a moderate content of silica and a relatively low content of alkali metals. It is Intermediate composition, inter ...

, and

tonalite Tonalite is an igneous rock, igneous, plutonic (Intrusive rock, intrusive) rock (geology), rock, of felsic composition, with phaneritic (coarse-grained) texture. Feldspar is present as plagioclase (typically oligoclase or andesine) with alkali fe ...

pluton In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

s indicate three phases of

intrusion In geology, an igneous intrusion (or intrusive body or simply intrusion) is a body of intrusive igneous rock that forms by crystallization of magma slowly cooling below the surface of the Earth. Intrusions have a wide variety of forms and com ...

dated at 68-54 Ma, 34 Ma, and 21-20 Ma. Two distinct systems of dykes are present, possibly of

Tertiary Tertiary (from Latin, meaning 'third' or 'of the third degree/order..') may refer to: * Tertiary period, an obsolete geologic period spanning from 66 to 2.6 million years ago * Tertiary (chemistry), a term describing bonding patterns in organic ch ...

age. The southeast portion of Anvers Island is part of the Neumayer Channel Tectonic Block. Mount Francais

Cultural references

Anvers Island was the scene of the protagonist Grim Fiddle's "kingdom" and his later imprisonment in John Calvin Batchelor's novel '' The Birth of the People's Republic of Antarctica''. Fiddle was an adventurer in a

dystopian A dystopia (lit. "bad place") is an imagined world or society in which people lead wretched, dehumanized, fearful lives. It is an imagined place (possibly state) in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmenta ...

future world with many references to

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology, is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

Features

Félicie Point Félicie Point () is a point which forms the south end of Lion Island, lying immediately east of Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago. It was charted and named by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, 1897–99, under Gerlache Baron Adrien Vict ...

, forms the south end of Lion Island, lying immediately east of Anvers Island *

Hippolyte Point Hippolyte Point () is a point which marks the northeast end of Lion Island, lying immediately east of Anvers Island in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica. It was charted and named by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition under Gerlache Baron Adrien ...

, marks the northeast end of Lion Island, lying immediately east of Anvers Island *

Lion Sound Lion Sound () is a small passage between Lion Island and the southeast coast of Anvers Island, in the Palmer Archipelago, Antarctica. It was discovered by the Belgian Antarctic Expedition, 1897–99, under Gerlache. The name appears on a map based ...

, a small passage between Lion Island and the southeast coast of Anvers Island * Zeus Ridge, a heavily crevassed ridge in central Anvers Island

References

External links

Anvers Island on summitpost website

updated long term weather for Anvers Island

weather statistics for Anvers Island
* * Anvers Island on the Palmer Station LocalWiki {{Portal bar, Islands, Environment, Geography, Earth sciences, Water, Weather Islands of the Palmer Archipelago