Dotting the World Britain's—Wonderful Collection of Islands

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6631, 9 June 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

Dotting the World Britain's— Wonderful Collection of Islands

The American viewpoint on England's vast island possessions as expressed "below , is interesting and , to Britons, amusing. The following article appeared in the San Frdnsisco “Chronicle." nHETHER it is done absentmindedly, done by instinct or done merely . by chance, history and the map reveal that England has shown a truly remarkable aptitude for possessing herself of little-considered ocean remainders in the form of small islands. One can, of course, see the force of her owning all < the islands, even the remotest Hebrides and Orkneys, that cluster aronnd her coast, the litter of them jumbled on the west coast of Scotland, the Scilly Isles, Manxland, Wight, Lindisfarne, Lundy, and the rest; no one except England could

own them, and some owner they must have, ■

But cross the English channel, and there are the Channel Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, Alderney, and Sark. Geographically they are a part of France. Politically and administratively they are England’s. They are so French that their legislature functions bllingually. England says, of course, that they are a residue of her oncelarge French dominions, and one must remember that it was not until far down in Victoria’s reign that the British House of Lords ceased solemnly to appoint a committee to hear petitions from Aquitaine and Louraiue. Enter the Mediterranean. What is Gozo? Gozo is an island of 2G square miles near Malta. To whom does it belong?—oh, to England, of course. “Well,” says England, “it is too near Malta to belong to anyone but me.” Who owns Malta (itself, by the way, only 117 square miles)? —of course, England owns Malta. It was a useful base when the Napoleonic wars were raging from Spain to Palestine, and through Egypt, Italy, Austria, and Dalmatia, Still more important inter. Enter now the Red Sea. Here is

Perim, a very small island. England’s, of course.

Now we are in the Indian Ocean. Here, as you emerge, is Socotra, producing “dragons’ blood" and aloes, and at a strategic point. It is 1,200 square miles, and is England’s, of course. And here are the Seychelles, 148 square miles, with no distinctive place to fill in the world of sand, air, and water save indeed that here grows beche de mer (vegetable ivory). We pass by Mauritius, for though a small island, 720 square miles, it has a place with the world’s great producers of sugar. Once “Reunion or Bourbon," it belonged then to France, when she bade fair to own half at least of India, and not merely the small patch, Pondicherry, now alone

hers. The British fleet, of course, took Mauritius. We get along through the section of the Indian Ocean known as the Carabian Sea, past the Laccadives, 14 low-lying coral islands; past the Maldives, 420 square miles, both England’s. Round we go into the Bay of Bengal. Here are the Andaman’s, 19 islands, 3,000-odd square miles, useful to England as a convict settlement. Then comes the Nicobars, G 35 square miles —England’s. Proceed eastward, at the tip of Malaya we find Singapore, which, though few remember it, is an island 217 miles, to be strongly fortified, for it is very strategic. It is the big gate to the Further East. On, and north, we reach Hong Kong, within call of the Chinese coast, 320 square miles — England’s. Say little of her possessions in the Pacific-—they are almost innumerable, counted as separate isles and islets. In a region where an empire has absorbed Australia, almost 3,000,000 square miles, New Zealand, 101.000 square miles, and Tasmania, 27.000 square miles, t say nothing of

the greater part of New Guinea and Borneo, to whom should the rest of it in fragments like Fiji belong if not to her?

But away to the Atlantic, rounding the Cape, which by all the rules of the game should be known as Gama’s, but is actually known as the Cape of Good Hope. Kerguelen, 90 miles long, almost due south of the Cape, British gazetteers regretfully admit is “claimed by Prance.” The Crozets are uninhabited, but there are the Prince Edward Islands, with the familiar red underscore. There are Gough, the (Atlantic) Sandwich Islands, South Georgia, hundreds of miles apart, The last-named is uninhabitable, but its 1,200 square miles of emptiness are British. Then there are the Falkland Islands, 500 square miles, and the F.L dependencies: also the dot of rock and lava known as Tristan. Northward we find St. Helena, the “black wart” rock, with patches of fertility in its depressions, that England made useful as a cage for Napoleon. St, Helena is 875 square miles. Ascension, 700 miles away, is smaller, population 240. Ascension was taken by the British because, as Admiral Cockburn said, “We don’t want some other flag hoisted there to increase the risk of Napoleon’s escape." Then we have the Bermudas, 900 miles from the United States, and British since 1654. '

In the West Indies are Barbados, 170 square miles; St. Kitts, 68; Nevis, 50; Barbuda, 78; and her islands in the Virgin group, the entire area of the group being only 275 miles square. In the sea between Jamaica and Cuba are the three Cayman islands, dependencies of Jamaica. Of what use they are to Jamaica, or Jamaica to them, it would be hard to say. Grand Cayman is 17 miles long, much of it swamp, much of it white limestone. The Caymans were discovered by Columbus in 1503. The Spaniards, after they took Jamaica in 1509, drew a supply of turtles from these islands. When Jamaica became British, in 1C55, the Caymans were automatically tacked on to her, and by degrees gathered a population, some of its units being shipwrecked sailors, other persons who for one reason or another (often to escape debt) came away from Jamaica to 'this out-of-the-way corner of the world. The population is now about 4,000. It lias a large overflow settled in New Orleans and Mobile, Central America and Jamaica, There is one other little island stuck in the North Sea, which of course England took—Heligoland. She, however, swapped it with Germany for land in Zanzibar, an achievement of Lord Salisbury’s that she came bitterly to regret during the World War.