Thule Island, also called Morrell Island, is one of the southernmost of the

South Sandwich Islands The South Sandwich Islands () are a chain of uninhabited volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. They are administered as part of the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. The chain lies in the sub-A ...

, part of the grouping known as Southern Thule. It is named, on account of its remote location, after the mythical land of Thule, said by ancient geographers to lie at the extreme end of the Earth. The alternative name Morrell Island is after Benjamin Morrell, an American explorer and whaling captain. The island was espied by

James Cook Captain (Royal Navy), Captain James Cook (7 November 1728 – 14 February 1779) was a British Royal Navy officer, explorer, and cartographer famous for his three voyages of exploration to the Pacific and Southern Oceans, conducted between 176 ...

and his '' Resolution'' crew on 31 January 1775 during his attempt to find Terra Australis.

Geography

Thule Island is roughly triangular in shape and in area with a long, panhandle-like peninsula called Hewison Point, , extending to the southeast. Steep slopes ascend to a summit

caldera A caldera ( ) is a large cauldron-like hollow that forms shortly after the emptying of a magma chamber in a volcanic eruption. An eruption that ejects large volumes of magma over a short period of time can cause significant detriment to the str ...

with the peak of Mount Larsen at above sea level. Mount Larsen is named after the Antarctic explorer and whaler Carl Anton Larsen. On the southwestern end lies Wasp Point. Off Hewison Point lies the small islet of Twitcher Rock, the southernmost land on Earth (with the two islets off Cook Island) outside the Antarctic Circle. Thule Island is the westernmost of Southern Thule island group, which also encompasses Cook Island and Bellingshausen 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 summit crater 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 .

Twitcher Rock

Twitcher Rock is a rock in the southern part of Douglas Strait, 55 meters high and 140 to 150 meters in diameter, lying 0.7 nautical miles (1.3 km) east of Hewison Point, the southeast point of Thule island. Discovered by a Russian expedition under

Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen Faddey Faddeyevich Bellingshausen or Fabian Gottlieb Benjamin von Bellingshausen ( – ) was a Russian cartographer, explorer, and naval officer of Baltic German descent, who attained the rank of admiral. He participated in the first Russi ...

in 1820, it was charted in 1930 by DI personnel on the British ship '' Discovery II''. They named it for

John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, Privy Council of Great Britain, PC, Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (13 November 1718 – 30 April 1792) was a British politician, statesman who succeeded his grandfather Edward Montagu, 3rd Earl of Sandwic ...

, who was popularly known by the nickname ''Jemmy Twitcher''. With the two islets off Cook Island, it is the southernmost land on Earth outside the Antarctic Circle.

Argentine occupation

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

, in order to assert its claim over the South Sandwich Islands, established the summer station "Teniente Esquivel" ( es) at Ferguson Bay on the southeastern coast on January 25, 1955. The station had to be evacuated in January 1956 because of

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 ...

eruption of Bristol Island to the north. In 1976 it established a military base on Thule Island called Corbeta 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 the

Falklands War The Falklands War () was a ten-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British Overseas Territories, British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and Falkland Islands Dependenci ...

in 1982. The base was occupied by British forces in the aftermath of the war and eventually destroyed later that year.

References

Notes

Sources

* *
volcano.und.edu
*

External links

* {{Portal bar, Islands, Environment, Geography, Earth sciences, Water, Weather Islands of the South Sandwich Islands Volcanoes of the Atlantic Ocean Volcanoes of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Uninhabited islands of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Rock formations of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands Volcanic crater lakes