Île Saint-Paul
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| Île Saint-Paul
St. Paul Island
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| Motto: Liberté, égalité, fraternité | |||||
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 Map of St. Paul Island
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Île Saint-Paul (St. Paul Island) is an island forming part of the French Southern and Antarctic Lands in the Indian Ocean, with an area of 6 km² (2.3 sq mi). It is about 85 kilometres (53 miles) south of the larger île Amsterdam, located at . It is a rocky and uninhabited island measuring no more than five km (three miles) at its greatest width and is completely devoid of trees.
During sailing ship days captains would occasionally use the island as a check on their navigation before heading north.
A scientific research cabin on the island is used for scientific or ecological short campaigns, but there is no permanent population.
Île Saint-Paul is one of three islands which is an antipode of the United States. It corresponds to Firstview, Colorado. The other two antipodes are île Amsterdam and Kerguelen Island.
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[edit] History
In the 1880s Charles Lightoller was shipwrecked here. He accurately describes the island in his autobiography, Titanic and Other Ships. During French rule of Mauritius, Saint-Paul as well as île Amsterdam were administered from Port Louis, but they were transferred to Réunion prior to British invasion of Mauritius.
In 1871 a British frigate, HMS Megaera, was wrecked on the island. Most of the 400 persons on board had to remain upwards of three months on the island.
Lightoller suggested that pirates may have used the island and their treasure could be buried in its caves. There is also speculation that officers from the German auxiliary cruiser Atlantis hid treasure near the entrance of the bay during World War II.[1]
In 1928, an ill-fated spiny lobster cannery was established on Île Saint-Paul. Seven employees of the cannery were abandoned to their fate on the island when the company went bankrupt in 1931; they later came to be known as Les Oubliés de Saint-Paul ("the forgotten ones of St. Paul"). Five died; the two survivors were finally rescued in 1934.[2][3]
[edit] See also
- Administrative divisions of France
- French overseas departments and territories
- Islands controlled by France in the Indian and Pacific oceans
- Sub-antarctic islands
[edit] Notes
- ^ Lightoller, C.H. (1935), Titanic and other ships, I. Nicholson and Watson, <http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301011h.html>
- ^ Les oubliés de lle Saint-Paul, by Daniel Floch. 1982.
- ^ "St. Paul and Amsterdam Island: A History of Two Islands." Discoverfrance.com. [1]
[edit] References
- LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W. (eds.) (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union, 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7.
[edit] External links
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Pictures of Île Saint-Paul
- Antipodes of the USA
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