Pim Island
| Pim Island | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Waters | Nares street | |
| Archipelago | Queen Elizabeth Islands | |
| Geographical location | 78 ° 44 ′ N , 74 ° 25 ′ W | |
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| length | 13 km | |
| width | 7.5 km | |
| surface | 86 km² | |
| Highest elevation | 550 m | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
Pim Island is an uninhabited island off Ellesmere Island at the northern end of Smithsund . It belongs to the Queen Elizabeth Islands in Nunavut , Canada .
geography
Pim Island is on the Nares Strait between Greenland and Ellesmere Island. It is separated from the Johan Peninsula by the Rice Strait , which is only a few hundred meters wide . This connects Rosse Bay in the south with Rutherford Bay in the north. The approximately 40 km long line from Cape Sabine, the eastern cape of the island, to Cairn Point on Greenland separates Smithsund from the Kane Basin . In the south-west of Pim Island there are some rocky cliffs, of which Brevoort Island is the largest. To the north is the small island of Cocked Hat Island ( German three- cornered island ).
The shape of the island is almost rectangular . From southeast to northwest, the island is 13 km long and in the central part up to 7.5 km wide. Their area is 86 km². At a maximum height of about 550 m, the land slopes gently to the northeast towards the sea, while the slopes to the southwest are steep. Pim Island has a small ice cap and several ponds that are ice-free for up to three months in summer, depending on the altitude. The largest is Proteus Lake with an area of 11.4 acres.
nature
Pim Island is rocky, only about five percent of its area is covered by vegetation . The rock consists of a mixture of Precambrian granite and migmatite .
The sparse vegetation allows only a thin population of the island by larger animals. The mountain hare and the arctic fox should be mentioned in particular . Polar bears can also be found here. Due to the island's location at the north-western end of the north water ( English North Water Polynya ), mammals such as the narwhal , walrus , ringed seal and bearded seal can be found in the surrounding sea . Although it on Pim Iceland no bird colonies are, live here Arctic seabirds like guillemots , eider ducks and glaucous gulls also ptarmigan .
history
Pim Island has been known to the indigenous people of Arctic America for millennia. The first European to see the island was Edward Inglefield , who entered Smithsund in 1852 and named Cape Sabine, among other things. The island itself is now named after Bedford Pim (1826-1886), a British naval officer who was involved in the rescue of Robert McClure and the crew of the HMS Investigator in 1853 .
In 1884, one of the greatest disasters in the history of polar exploration came to a tragic end on Pim Island. During the First International Polar Year , the United States operated Fort Conger in the north of Ellesmere Island, the northernmost of the twelve international stations in the Arctic. 25 men under the direction of Adolphus Greely pursued their scientific activities here from 1881 to 1883. After they had not been supplied with food in 1882, nor, as agreed, had been picked up by a ship in 1883, they set out south to get to Greenland via Smithsund to safety. Unfortunately, the north water polynya had formed that year too, so that they could not cross the strait and had to make quarters on Pim Island. The food depot found there was completely inadequate, so that the men went hungry in the winter of 1883/84. Their camp on the north coast of the island therefore went down in history under the name "Starvation Camp", although it was officially called Camp Clay. The relief expedition arriving on June 22, 1884 with the ship Bear of Oakland found only seven of the men alive.
Pim Island was also visited by later Arctic expeditions. From 1898 to 1899 the Second Fram Expedition, led by the Norwegian Otto Sverdrup, spent the winter on Rice Street . This had actually wanted to bypass and map the north coast of Greenland, but could not penetrate further north due to the difficult ice conditions. In the spring of 1899, however, she cleared up large parts of the geography of Ellesmere Island, before she switched to the Jonessund and discovered and mapped the Sverdrup Islands on extended dog sledding trips until 1902 . From 1899 to 1901 the expedition of the German-American Robert Stein was on Pim Island, but compared to the Fram expedition, it remained rather inconclusive.
In 1904 a Canadian expedition landed at Cape Sabine. Albert Peter Low (1861–1942) formally took possession of the island for Canada.
In the first years of the 20th century, Pim Island also played an important role in the expeditions of the alleged pole conquerors Frederick Cook and Robert Peary . Both ways led several times across the island, where they set up food depots for emergencies.
In May 1924, the men of the MacMillan expedition of 1923/24 put up a plaque for the victims of the Greely expedition between Cross Lake and Cemetery Ridge.
In September 2006, an automatic weather station was put into operation on Pim Island .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Alexandra Rouillard: Paleolimnological assessment of environmental changes occurring on Pim Island, Nunavut, High Arctic Canada (PDF; 11.3 MB). Master's thesis, Queen's University Kingston , Ontario, Canada, 2010
- ↑ January Marcin Węsławski, Joanna Legeżyńska: Chances for Arctic Survival: Greely's expedition Revisited (PDF; 387 KB). In: Arctic Vol. 55, No. 4, 2002, pp. 373-379
- ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia , Vol. 1, ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , p. 210
- ^ Otto Sverdrup: New Land . Vol. 1, Longmans, Green & Co., London 1904
- ↑ William Barr: Robert Stein's Expedition to Ellesmere Island, 1899-1901 . In: Polar Records . Volume 21, No. 132, 1982, pp. 253-274, doi : 10.1017 / S0032247400019008 .
- ↑ Renee Braden: Recalling a Tragic Tale in Arctic Exploration . National Geographic Web site , accessed December 11, 2011