The Fletcher Islands are a small group of
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 ...
s lying
west-southwest
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 ...
(WSW) of
Cape Gray
Cape Gray is a rocky cape which forms the east side of the entrance to Commonwealth Bay, part of the George V Coast of Antarctica. The cape is actually a small rocky island which is joined to the icecap of the mainland by an ice ramp. It was disc ...
in the eastern part of
Commonwealth Bay
Commonwealth Bay is an open bay about 48 km (30 mi) wide at the entrance between Point Alden and Cape Gray in Antarctica. It was discovered in 1912 by the Australasian Antarctic Expedition under Douglas Mawson, who established the main ...
. The Fletcher Islands were discovered by the
Australian Antarctic Expedition
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition was a 1911–1914 expedition headed by Douglas Mawson that explored the largely uncharted Antarctic coast due south of Australia. Mawson had been inspired to lead his own venture by his experiences on Ernest ...
(AAE) (1911-1914) under
Douglas Mawson
Sir Douglas Mawson (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was a British-born Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer, and academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, he was a key expedition leader during ...
, who gave the name Fletcher to
Fletcher Island, the large island of the group. The
United States Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names
The Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names (ACAN or US-ACAN) is an advisory committee of the United States Board on Geographic Names responsible for recommending commemorative names for features in Antarctica.
History
The committee was established ...
(US-ACAN) recommends that the name Fletcher also be applied for the group in keeping with the interpretation shown on
G.D. Blodgett GD may refer to:
Arts and entertainment
* G-Dragon (born 1988), leader of the South Korean musical group Big Bang
* Grateful Dead, an American rock band
* Green Day, an American rock band
* '' Geometry Dash'', a side-scrolling music platforming ...
's 1955 map compiled from air photos taken by
U.S. Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is the world's most powerful navy with the largest displacement, at 4.5 million tons in 2021. It has the world's largest aircraft ...
(USN)
Operation Highjump
Operation HIGHJUMP, officially titled The United States Navy Antarctic Developments Program, 1946–1947, (also called Task Force 68), was a United States Navy (USN) operation to establish the Antarctic research base Little America (exploration b ...
(1946-1947).
See also
*
Composite Antarctic Gazetteer
The Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica (CGA) of the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research (SCAR) is the authoritative international gazetteer containing all Antarctic toponyms published in national gazetteers, plus basic information about th ...
*
Fletcher Island
*
List of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands
This is a list of Antarctic and sub-Antarctic islands.
* Antarctic islands are, in the strict sense, the islands around mainland Antarctica, situated on the Antarctic Plate, and south of the Antarctic Convergence. According to the terms of the ...
*
List of Antarctic islands south of 60° S
*
SCAR
A scar (or scar tissue) is an area of fibrosis, fibrous tissue that replaces normal skin after an injury. Scars result from the biological process of wound repair in the skin, as well as in other Organ (anatomy), organs, and biological tissue, t ...
*
Territorial claims in Antarctica
Seven sovereign states – Argentina, Australia, Chile, France, New Zealand, Norway, and the United Kingdom – have made eight land claim, territorial claims in Antarctica. These countries have tended to place their Antarctic scientific observat ...
References
Islands of George V Land
{{GeorgeVLand-geo-stub