Blenheim Reef

Template: Infobox Atoll / Maintenance / height Missing

The Blenheim Reef (old name: Baxio Predassa ) is an uninhabited atoll in the northern part of the Chagos archipelago in the central Indian Ocean. Politically, it is part of the British Indian Ocean Territory.

Geography

The atoll lies some 217 kilometers north of Diego Garcia, 20 km north-east of the Solomon Islands and 15 km southeast of the largely submerged Speakers Bank. Blenheim Reef is located in north -south direction, 11 km long, in east-west direction 4 km wide and has a total area of approximately 37 km ². The fringing reef of the atoll is mostly under water, only on the eastern edge, there were the four sandy, now apparently the submerged at high tide Islands East, North, Middle and South Iceland.

History

Was discovered in the reef in the 1570s by the Portuguese, who gave him the name Baixo Predassa. The present name has made it off the ship Blenheim the British East India Company, which was lost in 1799 here. By 1880, the Indian Ocean Fruit Company tried unsuccessfully to plant on East Iceland coconut trees. 1975, it was integrated using the independence of Mauritius in the newly created British Indian Ocean Territory.