Jackson Island
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing
The Jackson Island (Russian остров Джексона, Ostrow Dscheksona ) is an uninhabited island of belonging to Russia Arctic Franz Josef Land.
Geography
The island is the eighth largest of the archipelago, with 521 km ² area. Its interior is almost completely covered by ice. One of her two ice sheets reached a height of 481 m. From the northwest, the De Long Bay cuts deep into the island. The Jackson Island is separated from its neighbors by 5-10 km wide Straits: in the north- east by the back channel of the Karl Alexander Island, in the southeast by the Italian channel from the Payer Island and on the south by the Booth channel from the Ziegler island. To the west there are several smaller islands and rocky islets.
Especially in the west of Jackson Island, there are some breeding colony of seabirds. Particularly well represented are the auks, black guillemot and kittiwake.
History
The island was first sighted by the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition in the spring of 1874. Julius Payer mapped its eastern part around Cape Kremsmuenster and held it and its neighboring islands for parts of a larger land mass, which he called Zichy- country for a sponsor of his expedition. 1895 reached the Jackson - Harmsworth expedition the island and explored the southwest portion to Cape Hugh Mill, the westernmost point of the island. From August 17 1895 to May 19, 1896 Fridtjof Nansen and Hjalmar Johansen wintered under the most primitive conditions at the Cape Norvegia. They had previously in an attempt to advance to the North Pole from the drifting with the ice ship Fram from by dog sled, reaching the northernmost point at which people had been until then. As Nansen in 1896 at Cape Flora on Northbrook Island Frederick Jackson's camp took and was able to return to his ship to Norway, he proposed to name the yet unnamed island after his savior.
The northern part of Jackson Island was mapped in 1900 by the expedition of the Duke of the Abruzzi with the Stella Polare. 1902 and 1904 the island was visited by other expeditions. Evelyn Baldwin hid a message deposited by Nansen in 1896 and 30 years later handed them over to the Norwegian Embassy in Washington, DC It is now preserved in the library of the University of Oslo.