Knight Island

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Knight Island
The crescent-shaped knight island
The crescent-shaped knight island
Waters Bismarcksee
Archipelago Siassi Islands
Geographical location 5 ° 31 '0 "  S , 148 ° 7' 0"  E Coordinates: 5 ° 31 '0 "  S , 148 ° 7' 0"  E
Knight Island (Papua New Guinea)
Knight Island
length 1.9 km
surface 30 ha
Highest elevation 140  m
Residents uninhabited

The Ritter Island (until 1880 also Volcano Island ) is a small crescent-shaped volcanic island 100 km northeast of New Guinea , named after the German geographer Carl Ritter . It is located between the Siassi islands Umboi and Sakar and belongs to Papua New Guinea .

Volcano on Knights Island

Eruptions of the stratovolcano on Ritter Island are known from the years 1700, 1793 and 1888. In late March 1700, William Dampier observed an eruption, and on June 29, 1793, Joseph Bruny d'Entrecasteaux saw both explosive eruptions and lava flows. Dumont d'Urville described the island as a 780 m high volcanic cone in 1827.

On March 13, 1888 at 5:30 a.m. local time, a large part of the Ritter Island sank during a phreatomagmatic explosion of moderate to mediocre order of magnitude ( VEI 2 ). About 5 km³ of material slipped into the sea. In Finschhafen , 100 km south, the explosion was heard and an almost imperceptible fall of ash was observed. The collapse triggered an avalanche of debris . This was followed by 12 to 15 m high tsunamis , which devastated the neighboring islands and the coast of New Guinea. About 3,000 people were killed. The German researchers Paul von Below and Carl Hunstein , who were in the south of the island of Neupommern , also drowned. After the collapse, there remained an island 80 to 140 m high and 1900 m long with a steep, west-facing semicircular lip. In the west of the volcanic remains, the remains of two large tipping clods that slipped when the island collapsed form submarine elevations.

The volcano is still active. Minor eruptions occurred in 1972, 1974, 2006 and 2007.

supporting documents

  1. ^ RJS Cooke: Eruptive History of the Volcano at Ritter Island. Geological Survey Of Papua New Guinea Memoir 10, 115-123. In RW Johnson (Ed.): Volume of Volcanological Papers
  2. ↑ Baldwin, Cradock, Joy Annals of Philosophy 1824 p. 212
  3. ↑ a b c Outbreaks of Knights Island in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English)
  4. ^ A b Steven N. Ward, Simon Day: Ritter Island Volcano — lateral collapse and the tsunami of 1888. Geophysical Journal International, Vol. 54, 2003 pp. 891–902 (PDF; 5.4 MB)
  5. ↑ Ritter-Insel in the Global Volcanism Program of the Smithsonian Institution (English)
  6. ↑ H. Klee (Ed.): Volcanic eruption in the protected areas of New Guinea. Latest communications , 7th year, No. 49, Berlin 1888.
  7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Ohff: Disastrous ventures: German and British enterprises in East New Guinea up to 1914. 496 S., Melbourne, Vic, Plenum Publisher 2015 ISBN 978-0-9943045-3-7

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