On 22 October the Cruizer class brig-sloops Zenobia and Peruvian claimed the island for His Britannic Majesty King George III. Organised settlement of Ascension Island began in 1815, when the British garrisoned it as a precaution after imprisoning Napoleon I on Saint Helena to the southeast. British mariners found the Dutchman's tent, belongings and diary in January 1726 the man's remains were not found. It is possible that the island was sometimes used as an open prison for criminal mariners, although there is only one documented case of such an exile, a Dutch ship's officer, Leendert Hasenbosch, set ashore at Clarence Bay as a punishment for sodomy in May 1725. Almost certainly, after a few days they found the strong water spring in the high interior of the island, in what is now called Breakneck Valley (there is a much smaller water source, lower on the mountain, which was named Dampier's Drip by people who probably misinterpreted Dampier's story). Sixty men survived for two months until they were rescued. In February 1701, HMS Roebuck, commanded by William Dampier, sank in the common anchoring spot in Clarence Bay to the northwest of the island. The Portuguese also introduced goats as a potential source of meat for future mariners. Mariners could hunt for the numerous seabirds and the enormous female green turtles that laid their eggs on the sandy beaches. Dry and barren, the island had little appeal for passing ships except for collecting fresh meat, and was not claimed for the Portuguese Crown. In 1503, the Portuguese navigator Afonso de Albuquerque sighted the island on Ascension Day (which fell on 21 May that year) and named it Ilha da Ascensão after this feast day. Location of Ascension Island in the British South Atlantic territories The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the United States Air Force operate a telescope on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. The island was used extensively by the British military during the Falklands War. The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station with a United States Air Force presence, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, an Anglo-American signals intelligence facility and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922. During World War II it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic. It played a role as an important safe haven and coaling station to mariners and for commercial airliners during the days of international air travel by flying boats. The island is named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension Day, and is located at Lua error in a at line 80: module 'strict' not found., about as far south of the equator as tropical Venezuela is to its north. The territory also includes the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, some 3,730 kilometres (2,300 mi) to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around 1,300 kilometres (800 mi) to the southeast. Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da CunhaĪscension Island is an isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, around 1,600 kilometres (1,000 mi) from the coast of Africa and 2,250 kilometres (1,400 mi) from the coast of Brazil, which is roughly midway between the horn of South America and Africa. Lua error in a at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |