Kanton Island
Template: Infobox Atoll / Maintenance / height Missing
Guangzhou ( Canton english Iceland, formerly Canton, also Abariringa ) is the largest, northernmost and currently only inhabited atoll in the Phoenix Islands in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. It is located in the central Pacific Ocean, about half way between Fiji and Hawaii.
Geography
Canton is a ring-shaped coral atoll, is, however, only from a narrow, almost closed main island, extending over a circumference of 37 km, with only one interruption in the West, where the little island ( motu ) Spam Iceland (4.4 hectares) is located. At the entrance of the lagoon south of spam Iceland is the lighthouse Musick Light. The total land area is less than 9 km ², surrounds, however, a relatively large lagoon 50 km ². On the main island in the only settlement in the west of the atoll Tebaronga 31 people ( as of 2010 census ). In the north of the atoll, the airfield Canton Airfield is located (IATA CIS, ICAO code PCIS ), with a length of 1.9 km ( 6230 feet), which was built during the Second World War, but is no longer served regularly since 1976.
History
The discovery took place on August 5, Canton in 1824 by two British whaling ships from London: The ' Phoenix ', Capt. John Palmer and the ' Mary', Capt. Edward Reed. The island received ( after the wife of the ship owner of ' Mary '), the name ' Mary Ballcotts (actually Boulcott 's) Iceland '.
The current name of the atoll is due to a shipwreck: On March 4, 1854, the whaler Canton ran in front of the reefs of the island due. Commander RW Meade, a survivor of that ship's crew that reached the lifeboats in a 49 -day odyssey Guam, named the island in 1872 in memory of this adventure to the stranded whalers.
Great Britain and the United States agreed in 1939 to control the atoll for 50 years together.
At times, Canton was an important base for trans-Pacific air transport.
2010 saw Alex Bond, who was with a yacht on the crossing from Hawaii to Fiji, that the inhabitants of the island under food shortages suffered. An important supply ship had not arrived, so they had to eat for several months only coconuts and fish. Bond contacted with his satellite phone, the U.S. Coast Guard, the food supplies prompted.