Roncador Bank
| Roncador Bank | ||
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| Waters | Caribbean Sea | |
| Geographical location | 13 ° 32 ′ N , 80 ° 3 ′ W | |
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| Number of islands | 3 | |
| Main island | Roncador Cay | |
| length | 15 km | |
| width | 6 km | |
| Land area | 16 ha | |
| total area | 65 km² | |
| Residents | uninhabited | |
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Roncador Bank ( Spanish Banco Roncador ) is an isolated, atoll-like coral bank in the southwestern Caribbean Sea .
geography
Roncador Bank is about halfway between Jamaica and Costa Rica , 140 km east of Providencia and around 220 km northeast of San Andrés . The coral bank, mostly submerged in the western part, is about 15 km long, up to 6 km wide and covers a sea area of around 65 km². At the northeastern tip of the fringing reef is Roncador Cay , by far the largest and most important cay in the Roncador Bank. On this 600 × 300 m large cay there are some abandoned buildings as well as a lighthouse built in 1979, around 25 m high. The cay has no permanent population, but is regularly visited by fishermen.
On the eastern fringing reef there are two small, vegetation- free sand spits without proper geographical names.
history
Roncador Bank first appeared on a Dutch map in 1601 under the name Arrecife Roncadore . The islands were claimed by the United States in 1856 under the Guano Islands Act and annexed in 1949. During the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the United States erected numerous military buildings on Roncador Cay . On September 8, 1972, an agreement was made to hand over the Roncador Bank and two other coral banks to Colombia . However, the agreement was not ratified by the US Senate until 1981 , so that on September 17, 1981, the islands came under Colombian sovereignty and were assigned to the province of San Andrés y Providencia . Some ships ran aground on the reefs of the Roncador Bank, for example the USS Kearsarge in February 1894 or the Panamanian Pamir Sound in 1991. On September 3, 2007, Category 5 Hurricane Felix passed the coral bank .
See also
Web links
- Roncador Bank on Oceandots ( Memento from December 23, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
- Information about Serrana and Roncador Bank (English)
- An aerial view of Roncador
- Official nautical chart: Banco Roncador
Individual evidence
- ^ John D. Milliman: Four Southwestern Caribbean Atolls: Courtown Cays, Albuquerque Cays, Roncador Bank and Serrana Bank. Atoll Research Bulletin No. 129, 1969 (PDF; 2.1 MB)
- ↑ Formerly Disputed Islands ( Memento of the original from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. on one side of the Office of Insular Affairs (English)
- ↑ Page about the accident of the USS Kearsage on GenDisasters (English)
