Sheehan Islands
| Sheehan Islands | ||
|---|---|---|
| Waters | Cooperation Lake , Southern Ocean | |
| archipelago | William Scoresby Archipelago | |
| Geographical location | 67 ° 12 ′ S , 59 ° 44 ′ E | |
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The Sheehan Islands are a group of small islands in the William Scoresby Archipelago off the coast of the East Antarctic Mac Robertson Land . They are there on the southeast side of the island of Islay .
The archipelago was discovered on February 18, 1931 by participants in the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition (BANZARE, 1929-1931) under the direction of the Australian polar explorer Douglas Mawson . He named one of the islands as Sheehan- Nunatak after Henry John Sheehan (1883-1941), deputy secretary of the Australian Treasury and secretary of the Australian Antarctic Committee for the BANZARE, in the erroneous belief that the entire archipelago was mountain formations on the mainland. The actual character of the island was revealed on February 27, 1936 by participants in the British Discovery Investigations on board the research vessel RRS William Scoresby . Norwegian cartographers carried out detailed mapping in 1946 using aerial photographs from January to February 1937 of the Lars Christensen Expedition 1936/37 . Mawson's naming was transferred to the entire archipelago in 1947 by the Advisory Committee on Antarctic Names .
Web links
- Sheehan Islands in the Geographic Names Information System of the United States Geological Survey (English)
- Sheehan Islands on geographic.org (English)