CANTON ISLAND

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 265, 5 August 1937, Page 12

CANTON ISLAND

Described by Member of Eclipse Expedition

ANCHORAGE INCIDENT RECALLED

Canton Island, in the Phoenix Group, to which Britain is laying claim having future Pacific air service requirements in view, was described in an address to the Wellington Philosophical Society lastmight by Mr. I. L. Thomsen, Wellington. Mr. Thomsen was a member of the official New Zealand expedition which recently viewed the eclipse of the sun from Canton Island. From lantern slides shown by Mr. Thomsen the island was seen to be little more than a narrow strip of land encircling a large lagoon, the whole being about nine miles long by four miles and a half wide. The coastline, be said, was of jagged coral rock, and the lagoon itself was studded with coral islets. Though he had not tested it himself, he had been told the coral would poison the blood when it cut the skin. On the island there was very little vegetation for human wants. There were a few miserable-looking palms and a large tree of a Samoan variety which looked from a distance like a huge rock covered with a creeper. The rest was scrubby vegetation of a foot to IS inches in height. Of the many forms of life on the island the birds were most prominent. They included the red-tailed tropic bird, with its two slender, red tail feathers about a foot in length; the booby birds, which, like an aeroplane, needed a long take-off; the frigate birds, one of which attacked him when its egg was stolen; and tlie beautiful and friendly white tern. Other forms of life were rats in their thousands, hermit crabs, which he hpd timed to travel at 49 yards an hour, lizards and turtles. The myriads of fish with which the water teemed in. eluded thousands of baby sharks. Mr. Thomsen mentioned taking observations to check those taken in 1889. He found them one degree only in error —a remarkable achievement for the instruments of those days.' He recalled the incident where the commander of the American vessel Avocet, which acted as transport for the American eclipse expedition, declined to vacate the only known anchorage for large vessels in favour of H.M.S. Wellington, which conveyed the New Zealand party to the island. The refusal, he said, caused a good deal of annoyance to those on board the British ship. H.M.S. 'Wellington lay elsewhere, but during the night lost her anchorage, and it was found in the morning that she had drifted 15 miles out to sea. However, the relations between the two scientific parties on shor.e were most friendly, the Americans placing at their disposal as much of their elaborate equipment as the New Zealanders cared to use.