Shannon Island
Template: Infobox Island / Maintenance / image missing
Shannon is a relatively large island off the east coast of Greenland, in the Greenland Sea. Administratively it belonged until 2008 to the province tunu / Østgrønland ( " East Greenland " ), since 2009 the unincorporated area of the Northeast Greenland National Park.
Geography
The uninhabited island located 12 km off the east coast of Hochstetter Foreland peninsula, separated therefrom by the Shannon Sound, and has an area of 1259 km ². It is 57 km long, up to 46 km wide and reaches Meyerstein Bjerg a height of 305 meters above the sea. Your northernmost point is Cape Borgen (75 ° 26 ' N, 18 ° 3' W75.425 - 18.045 ), its southernmost Cape Philip Broke (74 ° 56 ' N, 17 ° 37' W74.93 - 17 615 ).
To the south of the island is caused by regular winds that drift away from the pack ice coastal fast ice, one of the largest polynyas in East Greenland. Remains of settlements of the Thule culture in this region suggest that the polynya is stable for centuries and was used by the Inuit as a hunting ground for seals and whales.
Flora and Fauna
The vegetation on the island Shannon is that of a high-arctic tundra. In mammals collar lemmings, arctic hares, ermines, arctic fox, reindeer, polar bears and walruses occur. The number of musk oxen has declined dramatically in the 20th century. In 1936 it was estimated the population at 800 to 1000 animals and 1976 to 300 from 1988 to 1990, only a group of eleven animals was observed, despite intensive search.
In birds, the Snowy Owl, the Raven, the snow bunting, ptarmigan, common eider, the Arctic Tern, the sea beach runners and various gulls are found.
History
The island was discovered in 1823 by British polar explorer Douglas Clavering, who named it after the HMS Shannon, a frigate of the Royal Navy, on which it was previously run as a midshipman. 1869 reached the second German North Polar Expedition under Captain Carl Koldewey here its northernmost point. She took the island on cartographic and forgave some geographical names such as Cape Borgen, Cape Copeland and Cape Pansch after the expedition members Karl barrows, Ralph Copeland and Adolf Pansch ( 1841-1887 ).
1909/10 wintered a search expedition to Ludvig Mylius - Erichsen, the missing head of the Danmark expedition to the Shannon Island. Ejnar Mikkelsen (1880-1971) and Iver Iversen (1884-1968) traveled by dogsled 560 km over the ice to the north, without finding Mylius Erichsen. On their return they found their ship Alabama crushed by ice and abandoned by the crew before. They had two more winter on the island endure before they were taken in July 1912 by a whaler.
During World War II the German Navy from September 1943 (75 ° 19 ' N, 17 ° 48' W75.32 - 17.801666666667 ) ran until May 1944 in the north of the island at Cape Sussi a weather station ( Company bass player ). On October 16, 1944, the weather ship Extern Stones was discovered and applied off Cape borrow from the U.S. Coast Guard.