Henderson Island

Smaller Territories (UK) / Pitcairn / Adamstown /
 island, atoll, UNESCO World Heritage Site
Henderson Island is an uninhabited coral island located 193 kilometers northeast of Pitcairn Island, which which it is administratively linked. It was declared a World Heritage Site in 1988, because of its bird life and untouched phosphate reserves.

This island had been inhabited from around 800 until sometime before 1606. Trade with the nearby islands of Mangareva and Pitcairn sustained the tiny population of no more than 50 people. It is conjectured that the presence of of sea birds and shellfish made Henderson Island a vacation destination for Polynesians on relatively nearby islands.

Henderson Island is possibly most famously known as an island visited by the castaway crew of the whaleship Essex in 1820. The Essex, whose story inspired the Herman Melville novel Moby Dick, was sunk by an attacking sperm whale. The crew spent several months at sea before being rescued off the coast of South America.

Reported in 2017 The beaches of World Heritage-listed Henderson Island, in the Pitcairn Group off South America, contain an estimated 37.7 million items of debris together weighing 17.6 tonnes, a new study has revealed.Australian researcher Dr Jennifer Lavers said it meant the island had the highest density of plastic rubbish anywhere in the world.
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henderson_Island_(Pitcairn_Islands)
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   24°22'36"S   128°19'27"W

Comments

  • Henderson Island [Islands of the Pitcairn Group] [The Tomarchin-Moko Story] [The Henderson Island Skeletons] Henderson Island lies 107 miles east-north-east of Pitcairn (nearly 200 miles west-north-west of Ducie) at 24 degrees 22 minutes South, 128 degrees 20 minutes West. It is a flat limestone island about 100 feet high, five miles long, north to south, and two and three quarters miles wide, and is roughly rectangular in shape. It was discovered in 1819 by Captain James Henderson in the merchant ship Hercules. Shortly afterwards the island was sighted by Captain Henry King in the English whaler Elizabeth who named it after his ship. It was still known as Elizabeth Island to the Pitcairners when they first visited it in 1851. Although Henderson is six times larger than Pitcairn, it is uninhabited. One reason is, of course, its isolation--Pitcairn might also be uninhabited today if it had not been for the mutiny on the Bounty. The main problem with living on Henderson, however, would be the difficulty in finding good fresh water (brackish water can be found in clefts and pools). The island is densely wooded and so thickly interlaced with shrubs that walking is not only difficult but dangerous, since the vegetation conceals the cavities in the coral. Professor Harold St. John, who explored the island botanically some years ago, reported that a false step could mean plunging into a jagged limestone crevasse to sudden death. Incredibly, Henderson was nevertheleses populated by Polynesians, possibly for generations, between approximately 1250 and 1425 A.D. In 1971, Professor Yosihiko Sinoto of the Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu discovered small shelter caves in the base of a limestone cliff with evidence of human occupation.
  • actually, the population of Adamstown is 46. just so you know.
  • Is it me or is my brain thinking it is bigger then it really is?
  • Anybody knows where the wrack of "Bounty"? Please...? By the way, Pitcairn looks unreal, like a place on the other planet. And some strainge history...
  • Lauda: wrong island; the Bounty is apparently on the main Pitcairn Island, not on Henderson. Here: http://www.wikimapia.org/#lat=-25.0681851&lon=-130.0939178&z=12&l=0&m=h&show=/1954494/Bounty-Bay
  • Henderson is also visited irregularly by Pitcairners who go there to obtain miro wood, from which they make their famous traditional carvings for sale to visiting ships. My late father-in-law who lived on Pitcairn for 4 years in the 1960s went there on such a trip. The island is well known in ornithology circles for having four endemics species of land birds (a parrot, a dove, a rail and a warbler).
  • henderson ın şuan ki durumu nedir?
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