Pim Island
Pim Iceland is one of the Ellesmere Island offshore uninhabited island at the northern exit of the Smithsunds. It belongs to the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Nunavut, Canada.
Geography
Pim Iceland is located in the Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. From Johan Peninsula it is separated by only a few hundred meters wide, Rice Street. This connects the Rosse Bay in the south to the Rutherford Bay in the north. The 40 km long line of Cape Sabine, the Eastern Cape on the island, according to Cairn Point on Greenland separates the Smith Sound from Kane Basin. In the southwest Pim Iceland are upstream some rocky islets, of which Brevoort Iceland is the largest. To the north lies the small island of Iceland Cocked Hat ( German tricorn Island ).
The shape of the island is almost rectangular. From southeast to northwest, the island is 13 km long and in the central part up to 7.5 km wide. Its area is 86 km ². With a maximum height of about 550 m, the land falls to the northeast down to the sea, while the slopes are steep to the southwest. Pim Iceland has a small ice cap and several ponds that are free from ice, depending on altitude up to three months in the summer. The largest is Proteus Lake with an area of 11.4 hectares.
Nature
Pim Iceland is rocky, only about five percent of its area is covered by vegetation. The rock consists of a mixture of Precambrian granite and migmatite.
The sparse plant cover allows only a sparse population of the island by larger animals. Mention may be made especially of the mountain hare and the arctic fox. Polar bears can be found here. Due to the location of the island on the north- western end of the Northern Water polynya can be found in the surrounding sea mammals such as the narwhal, the walrus, the ringed seal and bearded seal. Although there is no on Pim Iceland bird colonies, living here Arctic seabirds such as guillemots, eiders and glaucous gulls, also ptarmigan.
History
Pim Iceland is named for thousands of years the indigenous peoples of the Arctic America. The first European to see the island was, Edward Inglefield, the import 1852 in the Smith Sound and named, among others, Cape Sabine. The island itself is now to Bedford Pim (1826-1886) named a British naval officer who was involved in the 1853 rescue Robert McClure and the crew of the HMS Investigator.
1884 was one of the biggest disasters in the history of polar research in Iceland Pim her tragic end. During the First International Polar Year, the United States operated at Fort Conger in the north of the island Elsemere the northernmost of the twelve international stations in the Arctic. 25 men led by Adolphus Greely were investigated here from 1881 to 1883 their scientific work. After they had been picked up by a ship in 1883 neither 1882 provided with food, yet, as agreed, they made their way south to get to safety on the Smith Sound to Greenland. Unfortunately, the Northern Water polynya had formed this year, so that they could not cross the strait and had make Pim Iceland quarters. The found there food depot was completely inadequate, so the men severely starved in the winter of 1883/84. Therefore your camp on the north coast of the island went under the name " Starvation Camp " in history, although it is officially called Camp Clay. The on June 22, 1884 incident with the ship Bear of Oakland auxiliary expedition found only seven of the men alive.
Pim Iceland was also attended by subsequent Arctic expeditions. From 1898 to 1899 wintered in the Rice Street, the second Fram expedition led by Norwegian Otto Sverdrup. This had intended to drive around and map the northern coast of Greenland, but could not penetrate further north because of the difficult ice conditions. You cleared in the spring of 1899 but large parts of the geography of Ellesmere Island on before they moved to the Jonessund and on extended dog sledding trips to 1902 discovered the Sverdrup Islands and mapped. From 1899 to 1901, the expedition of the German American Robert Stone ( 1857-1917 ) was on Pim Iceland, however, remained, compared to the Fram expedition, rather inconclusive.
1904 landed a Canadian expedition at Cape Sabine. Albert Peter Low (1861-1942) took over the island formally owned in Canada.
In the early years of the 20th century Pim Iceland played an important role for the expeditions of the alleged Polbezwinger Frederick Cook and Robert Peary. Both paths led several times over the island on which they put food depots for emergencies.
In May 1924, the men brought the MacMillan Expedition of 1923/24, between the Cross Lake and Cemetery Ridge on a plaque commemorating the victims of the Greely Expedition.
In September 2006, an automatic weather station was put into operation on Pim Iceland.