Pickersgill Islands
Pickersgill Islands | ||
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Waters | South Atlantic | |
archipelago | South Georgia | |
Geographical location | 54 ° 38 ′ S , 36 ° 45 ′ W | |
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Number of islands | 3 | |
Main island | Tanner Island | |
Residents | uninhabited |
The Pickersgill Islands are a group of three islands in the South Georgia archipelago in the South Atlantic . They are located about 15 km off the south coast of South Georgia and about 25 km southeast of Annenkov Island .
They were discovered in 1819 during the first Russian Antarctic expedition (1819–1821) under Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen . This mistakenly assumed that the island was discovered by James Cook in 1775 and rediscovered after Richard Pickersgill (1749–1779), a lieutenant in the Resolution , and mapped the largest island in the group under this name. The island named by James Cook was, however, the island that Bellinghausen had named Annenkov Island in 1819 . In the period that followed, the names that are valid today for the archipelago discovered by Bellingshausen and for the island discovered by Cook have prevailed.
Web links
- Pickersgill Islands in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey (English)
- Pickersgill Islands on geographic.org (English)