Groais Island

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Groais Island
Waters Atlantic Ocean
Archipelago Gray Islands
Geographical location 50 ° 57 ′  N , 55 ° 35 ′  W Coordinates: 50 ° 57 ′  N , 55 ° 35 ′  W
Groais Island (Newfoundland and Labrador)
Groais Island
Highest elevation 248  m
Residents uninhabited

Groais Island is an uninhabited island in the northeast of the Canadian province of Newfoundland . The island is thus in the North Atlantic across from Cape Rouge. It has an area of ​​41 km². The closest places on the Avalon Peninsula are Croque and Conche.

The bottom of the island consists mainly of gritty psammite and pelite .

history

Detail from a map from 1889 showing French treaty rights in Newfoundland

The island is now uninhabited, but was used early by Inuit fishermen who moved south in the 16th century. At that time, Breton and Basque fishermen appeared on the islands off Newfoundland, but before 1620 they withdrew from the area off Newfoundland and from northern Labrador as a whole . This was due to a long-lasting guerrilla war, with which the Inuit ultimately drove out the Breton and Basque competition.

It was not until 1680, when Canadian traders based in Québec became interested in the region, that fishermen in search of salmon, but also seal hunters, came to the islands again. French settlers were also drawn to the region.

The island got its current name from the Ile de Groix off the coast of Brittany . Possibly this goes back to the Breton word groac'h for 'witch'. Together with the neighboring Bell Island, the two "belles isles" were sighted by Jacques Cartier in 1534 . James Cook passed the island on July 4, 1754. In 1833 Edmund March Blunt wrote that it was 8 by 2½ miles, whereas John Purdy and Alexander G. Findlay claimed it was almost 7 by 3½ miles. After the latter, its northernmost point was at 50 °, 59 ', 15'N and 55 °, 27', 28 '' W.

Web links

Commons : Groais Island  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ^ Proceedings of the Geological Association of Canada 21-25 (1971), p. 179.
  2. ↑ Peter E. Pope: Les Inuit au Labrador méridional / The Inuit in southern Labrador , in: Études / Inuit / Studies 39.1 (2015) 15–36.
  3. ^ William Baillie Hamilton: Place Names of Atlantic Canada , University of Toronto Press, 1996, reprinted 1997, p. 210.
  4. ^ Frank McLynn: Captain Cook. Master of the Seas , Yale University Press, 2011, p. 53.
  5. ^ Edmund March Blunt: The American coast pilot , Blunt, 1833, p. 49.
  6. ^ John Purdy, Alexander G. Findlay: The British American Navigator , Laurie, 1847, p. 43.