Thule Island, also called Morrell Island, is one of the southermost of the South Sandwich Islands, part of the grouping known as Southern Thule. It is named, on account of its remote location, after the mythical land of Thule, said by ancient geographers to lie at the extreme end of the earth. (The alternative name Morrell Island is after Benjamin Morrell, US explorer and whaling captain.) Thule Island lies close to Cook Island and Bellingshausen Island. It is thought that Thule and Cook may have been a larger single island in the past, and there is evidence for a submerged crater between the two. Steam from the summit crater lake and ash on the flank was reported in 1962. Volcanic heat keeps the crater on Thule Island free from ice. The peak elevation is 3,525 feet (1,075m). Argentina, in order to assert its claim over the South Sandwich Islands, maintained the summer station Teniente Esquivel at Ferguson Bay on the Southeastern coast from January 25, 1955 through summer of 1956. In 1976, it established a naval research base on Thule Island called Corbeta Uruguay (Port Faraday) in the lee (southern East coast) of the island. The British discovered the presence of the Argentine base in 1978 and pursued a diplomatic solution to the issue until 1982. The base was occupied by British Forces in the aftermath of the Falklands War and eventually removed on June 20, 1982.
References
- "Thule Islands" at Global Volcanism Program
- LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W. (eds.) (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union, 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7.
- volcano.und.edu
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