Finschhafen is a town east of Lae on the

Huon Peninsula Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. The peninsula is dominated by the steep Saruwaged and Finist ...

Morobe Province Morobe is a province on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. The provincial capital and largest city is Lae. The province covers 33,705 km2, with a population of 674,810 (2011 census), and since the division of Southern Highlands Province ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. The town is commonly misspelt as Finschafen or Finschaven. During World War II, the town was also referred to as Fitch Haven in the logs of some U.S. Navy men.

History

The area was charted by the British navigator Captain John Moresby in 1873–74. Moru in Finschhafen 1884-1885

Finschhafen was surveyed in 1884 by the German scientist and explorer

Otto Finsch Friedrich Hermann Otto Finsch (8 August 1839, Warmbrunn – 31 January 1917, Braunschweig) was a German ethnographer, natural history, naturalist and colonial explorer. He is known for a two-volume monograph on the parrots of the world which earne ...

who gave his name to the town. A town was built in 1885 as part of the colony of

German New Guinea German New Guinea () consisted of the northeastern part of the island of New Guinea and several nearby island groups, and was part of the German colonial empire. The mainland part of the territory, called , became a German protectorate in 188 ...

and was named after the discoverer (-hafen = -harbour). In 1886,

Johann Flierl Johann Flierl (16 April 1858 – 30 September 1947) was a pioneer Lutheran missionary in New Guinea. He established mission schools and organised the construction of roads and communication between otherwise remote interior locations. Under his ...

and two other

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

missionaries settled in the area, creating a Mission station at Simbang. A malaria epidemic in 1891 caused the town to be abandoned by the German plantation owners and government officials. It was resettled afterward and was claimed by the Germans in 1894. It was finally abandoned in 1901. Finschhafen was occupied by the

Imperial Japanese Army The Imperial Japanese Army (IJA; , ''Dai-Nippon Teikoku Rikugun'', "Army of the Greater Japanese Empire") was the principal ground force of the Empire of Japan from 1871 to 1945. It played a central role in Japan’s rapid modernization during th ...

on 10 March 1942 during World War II. Australian forces recaptured the town at the Battle of Sattelberg during the Huon Peninsula campaign on 2 October 1943. The US built Naval Base Finschhafen in 1943-1944.

Transport

The city is served by Finschhafen Airport, built by US military during WW2; it has no scheduled air service as of 2023. On 2 February 2012, the passenger boat MV ''Rabaul Queen'', which had 350 or more passengers on board, sank away from the town, killing six people, injuring seven, and leaving at least 100 but possibly over 300 missing.

Climate

Finschhafen has a

tropical rainforest climate A tropical rainforest climate or equatorial climate is a tropical climate sub-type usually found within 10 to 15 degrees latitude of the equator. There are some other areas at higher latitudes, such as the coast of southeast Florida, United States ...

(Af) with heavy to very heavy rainfall year-round. Unlike many places in Papua New Guinea, Finschhafen and the southern part of

experience a rainfall maximum during the south-east monsoon (low sun season) because the Huon mountains block the north-westerly winds during the high sun season. The variation in Finschhafen is more than Lae because of stronger rain-shadow from the north-west monsoon winds.

References

External links

Pacific Wrecks information
Populated places in Morobe Province {{MorobeProvince-geo-stub

History

Transport

Climate

See also

References

External links