Canton Island

Entrance to Canton Island's Lagoon. Village site is to the left.

Canton Island (also called Abariringa), is the northernmost island in the Phoenix group, and the only inhabited one. It is a narrow ribbon of land 9 km² (3 sq mi), enclosing a lagoon of approximately 40 km² (15 sq mi). Canton is mostly bare coral, covered with herbs, bunch grasses, low shrubs and a few trees. Its lagoon teems with 153 known species of marine life, including sharks, tuna, stingrays and eels. Land fauna includes at least 23 bird species, as well as lizards, rats, hermit crabs and turtles.

In the mid-20th century, Canton had an important trans-Pacific airport and refueling station, called Langton, but its importance declined in the late 1950s with the introduction of long-range jet aircraft. After a brief stint as a U.S. missile-tracking station, the airport fell into disuse. However, today, the airport is still there, and (as of 2016) it was still home to a small military presence: 20 persons were residing there, mostly living in the buildings erected during the occupation of the island by Great Britain and the United States between 1936 and 1976.^[2]

Enderbury Island

Enderbury is a low, flat, small coral atoll lying 63 km (34 nmi; 39 mi) east-southeast of Canton. Its lagoon is rather tiny, comprising only a small percentage of the island's area. Herbs, bunchgrass, morning-glory vines and a few clumps of trees form the main vegetation on the island, while birds, rats and a species of beetle are the known fauna. Heavily mined for guano in the late 19th century, Enderbury has seen little human impact following the evacuation of the last four residents in 1942, during World War II.^[3]

Birnie Island

Birnie Island is a small, flat coral island about 20 hectares (49 acres) in area, measuring 1.2 km (0.75 mi) long by 0.5 km (0.3 mi) wide. It contains a tiny lagoon, which has all but dried up. A nesting place for flocks of seabirds, Birnie is devoid of trees and is instead covered with low shrubs and grass. Unlike most of the other Phoenix Islands, Birnie does not appear to have been worked for guano or otherwise exploited by humans.^[4] It was declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1975.

McKean Island

McKean Island is the northwesternmost island of the Phoenix group. Its area is 57 hectares (140 acres), and it is devoid of fresh water or trees, though it does have a hypersaline lagoon at its center. Carpeted with low herbs and grasses, McKean provides a sanctuary for the world's largest nesting population of lesser frigatebird (Fregata ariel), with a population of up to 85,000 birds. Actively worked for guano in the mid-19th century, it was abandoned by 1870, and no further use has been made of it.^[5]

Rawaki Island

Rawaki, or Phoenix Island, measures approximately 1.2 km (0.75 mi) by 0.8 km (0.5 mi), and covers 65 hectares (160 acres) in area. Its lagoon is shallow and salty, with no connection to the ocean. It does, however, have several freshwater pools—the only known freshwater wetlands in the Phoenix Islands.^[6] Treeless, Rawaki is covered with herbs and grasses, and provides another important landing site for migratory seabirds. Worked for guano from 1859 to 1871, Rawaki was abandoned and no human use seems to have been made of it thereafter.^[7]

Manra Island

Manra, or Sydney Island, measures approximately 3.2 by 2.8 km (2.0 by 1.7 mi). It has a large, salty lagoon with depths reportedly varying from between 5 and 6 metres (16 and 20 ft). The island is covered with coconut palms, scrub forest, herbs and grasses, including the species Tournefortia, Pisonia, Morinda, Cordia, Guettarda, and Scaevola. Manra contains definite evidence of prehistoric inhabitation, in the form of at least a dozen platforms and remains of enclosures in the northeast and northwest portions of the island. K. P. Emory, an ethnologist at Honolulu's Bishop Museum, has estimated that two groups of people were present on Manra, one having migrated there from eastern Polynesia, the other from Micronesia. Wells and pits apparently dug by these early inhabitants were also found.^[8]

Extensively worked for guano beginning in 1884 by John T. Arundel & Co, Manra was developed into a copra plantation in the early 20th century. In 1938, Manra was selected as one of three atolls to be included in the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, which represented the final expansion of the British Empire. Manra was subsequently plagued by drought and the death of the project's organizer. Due to these events, the effects of World War II and the declining copra market, the island was abandoned in 1963.

Nikumaroro

Nikumaroro, or Gardner Island, is approximately 6 km (3.7 mi) long by 2 km (1.2 mi) wide, enclosing a large central lagoon. Vegetation is profuse, including scrub forest, coconut palms and herbs. Large quantities of birds nest on the island, which was once the headquarters for the British colonial officer heading up the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, Gerald Gallagher. Gallagher constructed a village on the western end of the atoll, with wide, coral-paved streets, a parade ground, a cooperative store, an administrative center and residence, and a radio shack.

Gallagher died on Nikumaroro in 1941, and was buried on the island (where his empty grave monument can still be seen, though his remains were later moved to Tarawa).^[9] Like the other atolls in the settlement project, Nikumaroro was abandoned in 1963 due to the scarcity of fresh water, together with the declining market for the copra that had been produced on the island.

In recent years, Nikumaroro has appeared in media stories due to a theory that Amelia Earhart might have landed her plane at low tide on the edge of the atoll's barrier reef during her fateful around-the-world attempt in 1937. The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) made several expeditions to Nikumaroro during the 1990s and first decade of the 21st century, finding possible evidence, but no conclusive proof, for this theory.^[10] Investigation and expeditions to the island continue.^[11]

Orona Island

Orona, or Hull Island, measures approximately 8.8 by 4 km (5.5 by 2.5 mi), and, like Canton, is a narrow ribbon of land surrounding a sizable lagoon with depths of between 15 and 20 metres (49 and 66 ft). Like Manra, it is covered with coconut palms, scrub forest, and grasses; it also contains evidence of prehistoric Polynesian habitation. An ancient stone marae stands on the eastern tip of the island, together with ruins of shelters, graves and other platforms.^[12] Unlike Manra, Orona does not seem to have been worked for guano, but it became a coconut plantation and was made a part of the British Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme. Residents were evacuated in 1963, due to drought and the declining copra market.

Islands of the Settlement Scheme and Enderbury Island

Early history

There is evidence to suggest that Howland Island was the site of a prehistoric settlement, which may have extended down to Rawaki, Canton, Manra and Orona—probably in the form of a single community making use of several adjacent islands. Archaeological sites have been discovered on Manra and Orona that suggest there were two distinct groups of settlers, one from eastern Polynesia, and one from Micronesia.^[8] The hard life on these isolated islands undoubtedly led either to the extinction or emigration of these settled peoples, in much the same way that other islands in the area (such as Christmas Island and Pitcairn) were abandoned.^[13]

These ancient settlements were probably founded around 1000 BC, when eastern Melanesians are known to have travelled northwards across the water.^[14] Later settlement by Polynesians, and contact with Polynesia, is evident from archaeological digs. These have yielded basalt artifacts that originated in Samoa, the Marquesas, and the Cook Islands, and were transported to the Phoenix and Line Islands during the 12th–14th centuries AD.^[15]

Secondary discovery and mapping of the islands

In 1568, when Spanish navigator Álvaro de Mendaña de Neira was commanded to explore the South Pacific, he sailed between the Line Islands and the Phoenix Islands without sighting land, ultimately discovering "Isla de Jesus" (probably one of the islands in the Ellice group).^[16]

The oceans of the mid-Pacific and Micronesia opened up to new exploration in the early 19th century as whalers from Europe and the Americas began arriving.^[17] An influx of whaling vessels in the 1820s led to the secondary discovery and mapping of the islands between 1821 and 1825.^[18] They were the last islands in the Pacific to be fully explored and charted, probably because they were predominantly small, low, and isolated.^[19]

While it is clear that early 19th-century whalers were responsible for discovering most of Kiribati in the modern era, it is impossible to confirm exactly who discovered each of the islands, due to conflicting reports and inaccurate mapping.^[20] Jeremiah N. Reynolds's 1828 report to the American Navy recommended an exploring expedition to the Pacific because "the English charts, and those of other countries are as yet very imperfect. Much of their information has been obtained from loose accounts from whalers who were careless in some instances, and forgetful in others, and which were seized with greediness by the makers of maps and charts, in order to be the first to make these discoveries known."^[21]

This proposal came to fruition in the 1840s, when Charles Wilkes led the United States Exploring Expedition, consisting of the USS Peacock and the USS Flying Fish. The expedition surveyed the islands under the direction of William Hudson.^[22]

Identifying the secondary discoverers

Contemporary reports and later analysis provide conflicting evidence regarding the identification of the initial discoverers, a state of affairs only complicated by the numerous names given to each of the atolls.

In 1828, the U.S. Navy commissioned J.N. Reynolds to compile a survey of American discoveries in the South Pacific. Reynolds interviewed several New England whalers and inspected their logbooks, charts and documents. His report included at least 13 islands that fit roughly within the Phoenix group, but the coordinates he gave do not always compare to the now-established coordinates of that area.^[1]

Other contemporary reports of the islands added to the confusion about the details of the initial discoveries. The Frenchman Louis Tromelin reported his 1823 discovery of Phoenix island at 3°42'S, 170°43'W, while cartographer John Arrowsmith plotted it 12 minutes further north; a rediscovery of Sydney is at 4°26'30", 171°18'. The same year, James Coffin recorded "Enderby's Island" at 3°10', 171°10.^[1]

The United States Exploring Expedition seems to have been the first to use the name "Phoenix" to refer to the whole island group. It had previously been used only to refer to one of the islands within the group.^[23]

Later history

Most of the Phoenix Islands were annexed by Great Britain in the late 19th century. The United States claimed Howland and Baker Islands in 1935. In 1937, Britain incorporated all the islands in the Phoenix group, except for Howland and Baker islands, into the Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony. The United States claimed sovereignty over Canton and Enderbury in 1938, but in 1939 entered into an agreement with Britain to form the Canton and Enderbury Islands condominium and exercise joint control over the two islands for a term of 50 years.^[40] (The agreement continued in force until 1979, when it was nullified by Kiribati independence.)^[41] During this period of joint U.S.-British control, Canton was extensively developed, first as a seaplane-landing site, then later as a refueling station for trans-Pacific civilian and military aircraft. It remained in use until 1958.

Although shelled and bombed a few times during World War II, neither Canton nor any of the Phoenix Islands was ever occupied by Japanese forces.

Between 1938 and 1940, in an effort to reduce overcrowding on the Gilbert Islands, the previously uninhabited Orona (Hull), Manra (Sydney), and Nikumaroro (Gardner) islands were colonised, as part of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme.^[42] By 1963, however, the settlements on these three islands were deemed to be unworkable, and the entire population was moved to the Solomon Islands.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, the United States used Canton as a missile-tracking station. The island was before abandoned altogether in 1976, but then later resettled by members of the I-Kiribati community, who continue to reside there today. In 2008, the government of Kiribati designated the islands the “Phoenix Islands Protected Area”, which was at the time the world's largest marine protected area. Collaborations between Kiribati, the New England Aquarium, and Conservation International have allowed scientific expeditions to explore the Phoenix Islands in order to quantify the ocean's flora and fauna. This area is of particular scientific interest because it has been relatively untouched by human activity.^[43]

The Phoenix Islands have been surveyed by TIGHAR in an attempt to determine whether they may have been the landing site of Amelia Earhart, the pilot who disappeared in 1937 over the central Pacific Ocean near Howland Island while she was attempting a circumnavigational flight of the globe.^[44]

In May 2010, it was reported that a British sailor, Alex Bond, from Penryn, Cornwall, had saved a group of "desperate and starving" Kanton islanders after chancing upon them on his way to Australia. He happened to pull into a lagoon near Canton Island (which is the only habitable island in the Phoenix Islands chain, and lies to the northeast of Australia), whereupon he discovered that its 24 residents were destitute. A supply ship that had been expected to bring them food four months earlier had never arrived, and the 10 children and 14 adults had been surviving on fish and coconuts. At the time, Bond was reportedly working for a UK-based disaster-relief charity, ShelterBox, which provides emergency aid to people in need. He contacted the coast guard in Falmouth, England, using his satellite phone, and they in turn arranged for the U.S. Coast Guard to send supplies to the islanders from Honolulu, Hawaii.^[45]