ÃŽle Saint-Paul

The Saint -Paul Island (French Île Saint -Paul ) [ sɛpɔl ] is an uninhabited, 7 km ² island in the southern Indian Ocean. They belonged to France since 1892 and is now part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands ( French Austral Terres et Antarctiques Françaises ).

Geography

The volcanic island is located 92 km south of Amsterdam Island in the Indian Ocean and is its highest point, the Crète de la Novara, up to 268 m high. Especially noticeable is the crater shape of the island, where the north-east flank of the crater slope might have been blown away by wave erosion or a rash. Thus, bordered by steep slopes Bassin du Cratère is to one side out over the sea and the natural harbor protected only by two narrow spits of land. The town was then also a station for whale and seal hunters.

History

The St. Paul Island was probably discovered in the 16th century by the Portuguese, the first reference to 1559. They got your name from Antonio van Diemen, who sailed past on 17 July 1633 the island. Enter the first time the island was in 1697 by Willem de Vlamingh. It was researched end 1857 as part of the Novara expedition scientific detail.

1871 the frigate HMS Megaera before St. Paul and leak of Captain Arthur Thomas Thrupp ( 1828-1889 ) was deliberately run aground. As a result, spent most of the crew more than two months until the evacuation of the island.

In 1874, the island was a French observation station for the transit of Venus on December 9. A German expedition that had watched the event from the Kerguelen from the Saint -Paul Island visited with the SMS Gazelle on February 12, 1875. 24 years later the participants in the Valdivia expedition went ashore here. Its director, Carl Chun, still saw the wreck of the brig Holt Hill, who had suffered shipwreck in 1889 here. The German Antarctic expedition aboard the research vessel Gauss visited the island on 26 and 27 April 1903.

Already in 1893, Saint -Paul Island had been taken by the warship L'Eure in France for possession. In 1928 she was René Bossière, a Breton businessman, populated with a few dozen sailors. The lobster cannery Borne du Bougainville was put into operation on the crater rim. The insolvency of the company in Brittany, the settlers were forgotten and the supply ship L' Austral took the survivors until two years later on.

Wildlife

On the island there are colonies of the sub-Antarctic fur seals and the Rockhopper penguin. Additionally, it contains a nesting site for sea birds, especially terns and boobies and prions as the little ducks Petrel. After St. Paul Island is named, among others, the giant squid Architeuthis sanctipauli - kind, from the 1875 specimen was washed ashore on the island.

Effect in the literature

The island is the scene of several literary works:

• In his novel The last four of St. Paul Josef Maria Frank is concerned with the events on the island in the first half of the 20th century.
• As Dorothea Renata Budniok in the youth book Lost on the island lobster.
• Together with its neighboring island of Amsterdam, the island comes in the novel before The Children of Captain Grant by Jules Verne.
• The wreck of HMS Megaera place in the novel Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon literary mention.
• The novel acts Atlantis by Clive Cussler plays in part to Saint Paul.
• In the detective novel The fine nose of Lilli Steinbeck by Heinrich Steinfest the protagonists discover a secret French Mars station on the island.