Uninhabited island

Last updated
Helen Reef, Palau Desertisland.jpg
Helen Reef, Palau

An uninhabited island, desert island, or deserted island, is an island, islet or atoll which lacks permanent human population. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereotypes for the idea of "paradise". Some uninhabited islands are protected as nature reserves, and some are privately owned. Devon Island in Canada's far north is the largest uninhabited island in the world. [1] [2]

Contents

Small coral atolls or islands usually have no source of fresh water, but occasionally a freshwater lens can be reached with a well.

Terminology

Uninhabited islands are sometimes also called "deserted islands" or "desert islands". In the latter, the adjective desert connotes not desert climate conditions, but rather "desolate and sparsely occupied or unoccupied". The word desert has been "formerly applied more widely to any wild, uninhabited region, including forest-land", and it is this archaic meaning that appears in the phrase "desert island". [3]

The term "desert island" is also commonly used figuratively to refer to objects or behavior in conditions of social isolation and limited material means. Behavior on a desert island is a common thought experiment, for example, "desert island morality". [3]

Biodiversity

Desert islands are partly sheltered from humans, making them havens for a number of fragile wildlife species such as sea turtles and ground-nesting seabirds. Many species of seabirds use them as stopovers on their way or especially for nesting, taking advantage of the (supposed) absence of terrestrial predators such as cats or rats.

However, tons of waste from far away countries accumulate on their beaches from the sea, and the absence of surveillance also makes them desirable spots for poachers of protected species. [4]

Selected uninhabited islands

The abandoned lighthouse at Klein Curacao LighthouseOnKleinCuracao.jpg
The abandoned lighthouse at Klein Curaçao

Largest uninhabited islands

RankArea RankIslandArea (km2)Area (sq mi)Country/CountriesCoordinates
127 Devon Island (Tallurutit)55,24721,331 Canada (Nunavut)75°08′N 87°51′W
228 Alexander Island (Isla Alejandro I)49,07018,950None (Antarctic territorial claims by Argentina, Chile, and the United Kingdom)71°00′S 70°00′W
330 Severny Island (Severnyy Ostrov)48,90418,882 Russia (Arkhangelsk Oblast)75°30′N 60°00′E
431 Berkner Island (Isla Berkner)44,00017,000None (Antarctic territorial claims by Argentina and the United Kingdom)79°30′S 47°30′W
532 Axel Heiberg Island (Umingmat Nunaat)43,17816,671Canada (Nunavut)79°26′N 90°46′W
633 Melville Island (Ilulliq)42,14916,274Canada (Northwest Territories and Nunavut)75°30′N 111°30′W
740 Prince of Wales Island (Kinngailak)33,33912,872Canada (Nunavut)72°40′N 99°00′W
846 Somerset Island (Kuuganajuk)24,7869,570Canada (Nunavut)73°15′N 93°30′W
947 Kotelny Island (Olgujdaah Aryy)24,0009,300Russia (Sakha Republic)75°20′N 141°00′E
1054 Bathurst Island 16,0426,194Canada (Nunavut)75°46′N 99°47′W
1155 Prince Patrick Island 15,8486,119Canada (Northwest Territories)76°45′N 119°30′W
1256 Thurston Island 15,7006,100None72°6′S 99°0′W
1357 Nordaustlandet 14,4675,586 Norway (Svalbard)79°48′N 22°24′E
1459 October Revolution Island 14,1705,470Russia (Krasnoyarsk Krai)79°30′N 97°00′E
1568 Ellef Ringnes Island 11,2954,361Canada (Nunavut)78°30′N 102°15′W
1669 Bolshevik Island 11,2704,350Russia (Krasnoyarsk Krai)78°63'N 102.48°E
1771 Bylot Island 11,0674,273Canada (Nunavut)73°16′N 78°30′W
1877 Prince Charles Island 9,5213,676Canada (Nunavut)67°47′N 76°12′W
1982 Komsomolets Island 9,0063,477Russia (Krasnoyarsk Krai)80°29′N 94°59′E
2085 Carney Island 8,5003,300None73°57′S 121°00′W
21107 Coats Island 5,4982,123Canada (Nunavut)62°35′N 82°45′W'
22111 Amund Ringnes Island 5,2552,029Canada (Nunavut)78°20′N 96°25′W

Most of the largest uninhabited islands are well within the Arctic or Antarctic circles, indicating that the reason for their desertedness is the freezing climate.

The first known novels to be set on a desert island were Hayy ibn Yaqdhan written by Ibn Tufail (1105–1185), followed by Theologus Autodidactus written by Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288). The protagonists in both (Hayy in Hayy ibn Yaqdhan and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) are feral children living in seclusion on a deserted island, until they eventually come in contact with castaways from the outside world who are stranded on the island. The story of Theologus Autodidactus, however, extends beyond the deserted island setting when the castaways take Kamil back to civilization with them. [8]

William Shakespeare's 1610–11 play, The Tempest , uses the idea of being stranded on a desert island as a pretext for the action of the play. Prospero and his daughter Miranda are set adrift by Prospero's treacherous brother Antonio, seeking to become Duke of Milan, and Prospero in turn shipwrecks his brother and other men of sin onto the island.

A Latin translation of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, [9] [10] followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, [11] as well as German and Dutch translations. [12] In the late 17th century, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan inspired Robert Boyle, an acquaintance of Pococke, to write his own philosophical novel set on a deserted island, The Aspiring Naturalist. [13] Ibn al-Nafis' Theologus Autodidactus was also eventually translated into English in the early 20th century.

Robinson Crusoe in an 1887 German illustration Robinson Offterdinger 001.jpg
Robinson Crusoe in an 1887 German illustration

Published in 1719, Daniel Defoe's novel Robinson Crusoe , about a castaway on a desert island, has spawned so many imitations in film, television and radio that its name was used to define a genre, Robinsonade. [14] [15] The novel features Man Friday, Crusoe's personal assistant. It is likely that Defoe took inspiration for Crusoe from a Scottish sailor named Alexander Selkirk, who was rescued in 1709 after four years on the otherwise uninhabited Juan Fernández Islands; Defoe usually made use of current events for his plots. It is also likely that he was inspired by the Latin or English translations of Ibn Tufail's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. [9] [12] [16] [17]

Noel Paul Stookey wrote a song about living on a desert island called "On a Desert Island (With You in My Dreams)" on Peter, Paul & Mary's 1965 album See What Tomorrow Brings .

Tom Neale was a New Zealander who voluntarily spent 16 years in three sessions in the 1950s and 1960s living alone on the island of Suwarrow in the Northern Cook Islands group. His time there is documented in his autobiography, An Island to Oneself. [18]

In the popular conception, such islands are often located in the Pacific, tropical, uninhabited and usually uncharted. [19] They are remote locales that offer escape and force people marooned or stranded as castaways to become self-sufficient and essentially create a new society. This society can either be utopian, based on an ingenious re-creation of society's comforts (as in Swiss Family Robinson and, in a humorous form, Gilligan's Island ) or a regression into savagery (the major theme of both Lord of the Flies and The Beach ).

Desert island jokes are also a hugely popular image for gag cartoons, the island being conventionally depicted as just a few yards across with a single palm tree (probably due to the visual constraints of the medium). 17 such cartoons appeared in The New Yorker in 1957 alone. [20]

A special variation of the desert island theme appears in H. G. Wells's The War in the Air . As part of the cataclysmic global war depicted, the bridges linking Goat Island in the middle of the Niagara Falls to the mainland are cut, and with civilization fast breaking down a few survivors stranded on the island cannot expect rescue and must rely on their own resources—embarking on a grim life-and-death struggle.

The top "dream vacation" for heterosexual men surveyed by Psychology Today was "marooned on a tropical island with several members of the opposite sex". [21]

Historical castaways

Essex

In 1820, the crew of the British whaler Essex spent time on uninhabited British Henderson Island. There they gorged on birds, fish, and vegetation and found a small freshwater spring. After one week, they had depleted the island's resources and most of the crew left on three whaleboats, while three of the men decided to remain on the island and survived there for four months until their rescue. [22]

Strathmore

Survivors of the British Strathmore survived for seven months at a small island of the French Crozet Islands from 1875 to 1876. They survived by eating eggs and flesh of geese, albatrosses and other seabirds. They also ate root vegetables and fish. [23] The survival was the input for among others the book Survival on the Crozet Islands: The Wreck of the Strathmore in 1875. [24]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 Lew, Josh (April 23, 2018). "10 (almost) deserted islands". MNN Galleries. Archived from the original on December 28, 2019. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  2. 1 2 "Mars Researchers Rendezvous on Remote Arctic Island". Langley Research Center, Atmospheric Science Data Center, NASA. Archived from the original on April 29, 2017. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  3. 1 2 "desert island" . Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press . Retrieved 11 June 2019.(Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  4. Frédéric Ducarme. "Les aires protégées à l'épreuve de la réalité". Société Française d'Ecologie  [ fr ]. Archived from the original on 2017-12-01. Retrieved 2020-03-23.
  5. kuschk (3 May 2012). "Devon Island: The Largest Uninhabited Island on Earth". Basement Geographer. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 27 February 2014.
  6. "German MPs suggest cash-strapped Greece should sell islands". The Local. March 4, 2010. Archived from the original on May 12, 2021. Retrieved May 18, 2023.
  7. "About Tetepare Island". Tetepare.org. Archived from the original on November 18, 2019. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  8. Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn Al-Nafis as a philosopher", Symposium on Ibn al-Nafis, Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait (cf. Ibnul-Nafees As a Philosopher Archived February 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine , Encyclopedia of Islamic World).
  9. 1 2 Amber Haque (2004), "Psychology from Islamic Perspective: Contributions of Early Muslim Scholars and Challenges to Contemporary Muslim Psychologists", Journal of Religion and Health43 (4): 357–377 [369].
  10. Kalin, Brahim (March 10, 2018). "'Hayy ibn Yaqdhan' and the European Enlightenment". Daily Sabah. Archived from the original on June 24, 2020. Retrieved April 14, 2020.
  11. Simon Ockley (1708), The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan, Oxford University.
  12. 1 2 Martin Wainwright, Desert island scripts Archived 2008-01-17 at the Wayback Machine , The Guardian , 22 March 2003.
  13. G. J. Toomer (1996), Eastern Wisedome and Learning: The Study of Arabic in Seventeenth-Century England, p. 222, Oxford University Press, ISBN   0-19-820291-1.
  14. Steampunk anthology, 2008, ed. Ann VanderMeer & Jeff VanderMeer, ISBN   978-1-892391-75-9
  15. Empire Islands: Castaways, Cannibals, And Fantasies of Conquest, by Rebecca Weaver-Hightower, University of Minnesota P, 2007, ISBN   978-0816648634
  16. Nawal Muhammad Hassan (1980), Hayy bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A study of an early Arabic impact on English literature, Al-Rashid House for Publication.
  17. Cyril Glasse (2001), New Encyclopedia of Islam , p. 202, Rowman Altamira, ISBN   0-7591-0190-6.
  18. Neale, Tom (July 16, 1990). "An island to oneself: the story of six years on a desert island". Ox Bow Press via Library of Congress ISBN.
  19. Leadbeater, Chris (20 October 2017). "The 30 most idyllic islands on Earth" . The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 2022-01-12.
  20. Bruce Handy (May 25, 2012). "A Guy, a Palm Tree, and a Desert Island: The Cartoon Genre That Just Won't Die". Vanity Fair. Archived from the original on December 21, 2016. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  21. Clarke, Thurston (2001). Searching for Crusoe . New York: Ballantine. ISBN   9780345411433.
  22. "Lloyd's list. 1821". HathiTrust. Archived from the original on 2017-05-10. Retrieved 2017-10-26.
  23. "Varia". Algemeene visscherij-courant (in Dutch). 2 April 1876 via Delpher.
  24. "Survival on the Crozet Islands: The Wreck of the Strathmore in 1875.: 9780908708024 - AbeBooks". Archived from the original on 2023-11-03. Retrieved 2023-09-30.