DESIRED AS BASES

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 107, 9 May 1938, Page 9

DESIRED AS BASES

AIR LINES' NEEDS HISTORY OF ISLANDS Tiny islands in the Pacific, many of them uninhabited and most of them

forgotten except by the map makers, have recently assumed international

importance, writes Harold Butcher in the "New York Times." For some time

the State and Navy Departments in Washington have been searching old records of whaling ship voyages, preparing to make formal claims based on priority of discovery. The islands which empire builders rejected or forgot have now become of real or potential'value to modern nations which

need air bases in far places. The islands under investigation include members of the Phoenix, Gilbert, Ellice, and other groups lying along and south of the Equator hrthe vicinity of the International Date Line. Ine status of several groups lying south of South America, in the Antarctic area, is also under scrutiny. American whalers in 1791 and 1792 were the first to put most of the South Pacific islands on the maps, although many of them have been claimed by Great Britain since then. Oeno Island near Pitcairn, as an example, is said to have been discovered by an American sea captain in 1827; Britain is now planning to erect a radio station there. All told, more than twenty-five of the South Pacific islands are said to have been discovered by whalers out of Nan-

tucket alone. Many of these pinpoints of rock have had uneventful histories and are still j of no immediate use. But illustrating uses to which they might be put is Wake Island. Less than two years ago Wake was practically unknown outside aviation and geographic circles. Five thousand miles from the American mainland, it was merely a danger spot for passing ships. Today it, like Midway and Guam, is an essential port on the airway that links the United States and the Far East.

OLD ANCHOR FOUND. Wake was discovered in 1796, but was not charted until 1841, when Captain Charles Wilkes, ,of New York, visited it during a voyage into Antarctic and Pacific areas. I Wake has seen its tragedies and high adventures, one of which was indicated when the airport crew found a rusty anchor half buried on one of the reefs. That anchor once belonged to the German barque Libelle, which was wrecked there in March of 1866. The captain and crew made shore, found no water there, lived three weeks on salvaged ship's supplies, and buried cargo and treasure worth £83,000. Then they put off, twenty-two in open boats and nine in the captain's gig. The open boats reached Guam, 1500 miles away, the gig vanished, and no one ever reported finding the buried treasure. Wake's reefs still are a threat to passenger vessels, but its lagoon is a friendly port for the flying Clippers,

and an up-to-date hotel has been built on the island. Sportsmen find its waters provide excellent fishing for , tuna, wahoo, dolphin, and the great I barracuta. Midway Island lies 1185 miles east of Wake and 1304 miles" from Hono- ' lulu. Once entirely barren, it was 1 so inhospitable that earth had to be ' shipped there to make it habitable for a few cable employees, who for a long I time were its only inhabitants. Now, , as an airport, it has an excellent inn and all the comforts of home. 1 Guam is considerably more of an- ; island. It has 206 square miles and ' 18,000 inhabitants, nearly all natives. Largest of the Marianas, it lies in the midst of Japan's mandated islands of the Marshall, Pelew, Caroline, and Mariana groups. Besides being a port for air travel, it is a naval station and has a powerful Government radio station. It was discovered by Magellan in 1521, belonged to Spain after 1696, and was acquired by the United States - in 1898.

EXAMPLE OF NEW NEED. Wake and Midway are merely examples of the new need for forgotten islands and the way they have been used. But they also indicate why there was a flurry of international speculation last year when two expeditions, one from America, one from Britain, went to a lonely, uninhabited atoll named Canton to observe the eclipse of the sun. There were reports of disputed sovereignty, which later proved unfounded; the two expeditions work-1 ed in friendship and harmony. But Canton's potential value was spotlighted nevertheless. Canton Island is one of the Phoenix group of eight small points of land and several reefs, lyi*» just to the east of the Gilbert and Ellice groups under nominal British sovereignty. Aside from an attempt to establish a trade in copra there, Canton has meant nothing to anybody in all the passing years. Even the romantics, whose dreams turn longingly to palm-covered Pacific isles, need something more than surf, sand, and a blue lagoon. But the lagoon makes Canton significant in this new air age. Hence it is not at all surprising that the British officials in Fiji are reported to have gone to ■ Canton to establish a permanent settle-

■ men! When a British cruiser recently sent | t landing parties ashore to the small un- , inhabited atolls of Henderson, Ducie, 5 and Oeno, to the north of Pitcairn a (famous as the island settled by the mutineers from H.M.S. Bounty in 1790), it was evidently a reaffirmation of British claims to these islands—almost midway between New Zealand and South America—islands that might play an important part in British air development and defence. Perhaps someone recalled that three other apparn ently insignificant Pacific islands— 4 Baker, Jarvis, and Howland, which used to appear on the maps as part of

the Gilbert and Ellice Islands group— 1 had been placed under the Department of the Interior of the United States by executive order of the President in May, 1936. It was on her way to tiny Howland Island—mile and a half l° n g> half a mile wide, with two miles of runways for land aeroplanes—that Amelia Earhart lost her life. I people of the bounty. Pitcairn Island, of volcanic origin, 1000 feet high, surrounded by steep cliffs, is inhabited by 150 descendants of John Adams, the only one of the nine mutinous sailors of the Bounty left alive ten years after they, with six Tahitian men and twelve Tahitian women, landed there in 1790 Captain William Bligh, commanding the , Bounty, had visited Tahiti in 1788, and in his account of the mutiny he attributed their sudden attack on him to a ] desire to return to the easy life of that . 1S Pitcairn is the only permanently inhabited island of its group. Oeno and Ducie are only low coral atolls, P ar ■ awash, with boat passages into the lagoons. Henderson, of limestone, rises to about a hundred feet, it ihas valuable phosphate deposi . Another Pacific island, which the French may bring into prominence, is Clipperton, 1300 miles west of the Panama Canal, desolate, ringed w:ith coral, one mile square. Clipperton is known as the Isle of Passion, a name it acquired because a mad negro is supposed to have proclaimed king of the island after all the other males had perished. He decreed, so the story goes, that all the women of the island should become inmates of his harem. The decree, however, did not meet with the approval ■ of one woman, who crushed his skull with hammer. „ . Clipperton, which finally became French in 1931 after years of dispute between France and Mexico, has extremely dangerous coral reefs, which make the island uninviting to ships. But it has a superb lagoon, which : makes it attractive for use by seai planes.