Flint Island is an uninhabited coral atoll in the central Pacific Ocean

Pacific Ocean

The Pacific Ocean is the largest of the Earth's oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic in the north to the Southern Ocean in the south, bounded by Asia and Australia in the west, and the Americas in the east.At 165.2 million square kilometres in area, this largest division of the World...

, part of the Southern Line Islands

Line Islands

The Line Islands, Teraina Islands or Equatorial Islands, is a chain of eleven atolls and low coral islands in the central Pacific Ocean, south of the Hawaiian Islands, that stretches for 2,350 km in a northwest-southeast direction, making it one of the longest islands chains of the world...

 under the jurisdiction of Kiribati

Kiribati

Kiribati , officially the Republic of Kiribati, is an island nation located in the central tropical Pacific Ocean. The permanent population exceeds just over 100,000 , and is composed of 32 atolls and one raised coral island, dispersed over 3.5 million square kilometres, straddling the...

.

Geography

Flint Island is located about 740 kilometers (400 nautical miles) northwest of Tahiti

Tahiti

Tahiti is the largest island in the Windward group of French Polynesia, located in the archipelago of the Society Islands in the southern Pacific Ocean. It is the economic, cultural and political centre of French Polynesia. The island was formed from volcanic activity and is high and mountainous...

, 190 km (100 nautical miles) south-southeast of Vostok Island

Vostok Island

Vostok Island also known as Staver Island, is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Line Islands belonging to Kiribati...

, and 220 km (120 nautical miles) southwest of Caroline Island

Caroline Island

Caroline Island or Caroline Atoll , is the easternmost of the uninhabited coral atolls which comprise the southern Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean....

. The island is about 2.5 miles (4 km) long and 0.5 mile (0.80467 km) wide at its widest point (4.0 by 0.8 km). It has a land area of 1 mi² (3 km ²) and rises to a height of 25 feet (8 m) above sea level. The island is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef and with no safe anchorage landing is difficult.

According to the U.S. Exploring Expedition (February 5, 1841), the island was thickly wooded with primeval forest, however the island is now mostly covered with planted coconut

Coconut

The coconut palm, Cocos nucifera, is a member of the family Arecaceae . It is the only accepted species in the genus Cocos. The term coconut can refer to the entire coconut palm, the seed, or the fruit, which is not a botanical nut. The spelling cocoanut is an old-fashioned form of the word...

 palms.

History

The island was first sighted in 1801; the name of its discoverer is unknown. An entry in Krusenstern's 'Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane' published in 1819 makes it clear, that the name 'Flint' does not stem from Capt. Keen in 1835, who in all probability already found the term on a navigational chart. Flint Island was claimed under the 1856 U.S.

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 Guano Act but apparently never occupied. It was leased by the British to Houlder Brothers and Co.

Houlder Line

The Houlder Line were a number of related British Shipping companies originally established by the Houlder brothers. was operated by the Houlder Line and was torpedoed in the North Atlantic in 1940. was operated by the Houlder Line...

, of London who carried out guano

Guano

Guano is the excrement of seabirds, cave dwelling bats, and seals. Guano manure is an effective fertilizer due to its high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen and also its lack of odor. It was an important source of nitrates for gunpowder...

 digging in the central part of the island from 1875 to 1880 under field manager John T. Arundel

John T. Arundel

John T. Arundel was an entrepreneur who was instrumental in the development of the mining of phosphate rock on the Pacific islands of Nauru and Banaba ....

. The excavated areas have since filled with brackish water, forming two or three small lagoons. Coconut palms were planted on the island by Arundel in 1881 and copra

Copra

Copra is the dried meat, or kernel, of the coconut. Coconut oil extracted from it has made copra an important agricultural commodity for many coconut-producing countries. It also yields coconut cake which is mainly used as feed for livestock.-Production:...

 was produced until 1891. The island was leased in 1911 to S.R. Maxwell and Co., Ltd. who employed 30 men and one manager to harvest copra from the approximately 30,000 coconut palms.

On January 3, 1908 a total eclipse of the sun was observed on the island by an expedition from the Lick Observatory

Lick Observatory

The Lick Observatory is an astronomical observatory, owned and operated by the University of California. It is situated on the summit of Mount Hamilton, in the Diablo Range just east of San Jose, California, USA...

in California. The observation point on the island was determined to be at 11°25′27"S 151°48′15"W latitude.

External links

• Flint Island information
• More Flint Island information
• Krusenstern, A. J. von: Beyträge zur Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane als Erläuterungen zu einer Charte des ganzen Erdkreises nach Mercators Projection; Leipzig : Kummer, 1819 (from the digital collections of the Göttingen Library) (p. 208)http://www-gdz.sub.uni-goettingen.de/cgi-bin/digbib.cgi?PPN339963026