The Duff Islands are a small island group lying to the northeast of the

Santa Cruz Islands The Santa Cruz Islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, part of Temotu Province of the nation of Solomon Islands discovered by the Spaniards. They lie approximately 250 miles (400 km) to the southeast of the Solomon Islands ...

in the

Solomon Islands Solomon Islands is an island country consisting of six major islands and over 900 smaller islands in Oceania, to the east of Papua New Guinea and north-west of Vanuatu. It has a land area of , and a population of approx. 700,000. Its capit ...

province of Temotu. They are also sometimes known as the Wilson Islands. Map of the Santa Cruz Islands (Solomon Islands)

Location and geography

The islands are located at 9°51'48" S. lat., 167°4'48" E. long. The Duff Islands consist of: * Taumako, the main island, with nearby Tahua, Tohua, and Tatumotu *The

Bass Islands The Bass Islands are three American islands in the western half of Lake Erie. They are north of Sandusky, Ohio, and south of Pelee Island, Ontario. South Bass Island () is the largest of the islands, followed closely by North Bass Island () ...

Lua Lua or LUA may refer to: Science and technology * Lua (programming language) * Latvia University of Agriculture * Last universal ancestor, in evolution Ethnicity and language * Lua people, of Laos * Lawa people, of Thailand sometimes referred t ...

Kaa Kaa is a fictional character from ''The Jungle Book'' stories written by Rudyard Kipling. He is a giant snake who is 30 feet long. In the books and many of the screen adaptations, Kaa is an ally of main protagonist Mowgli, acting as a friend ...

and Loreva * Treasurer's Islands: Tuleki (Nula), Elingi (Obelisk Island), Te Aku (Te Ako), Lakao and Ulaka Frequently, Hallie Jackson Reef is mentioned in the context of the Duff islands, although it is located 45 km west of that 32 km long island chain, and although it is not an island, at most a submarine

reef A reef is a ridge or shoal of rock, coral or similar relatively stable material, lying beneath the surface of a natural body of water. Many reefs result from natural, abiotic processes— deposition of sand, wave erosion planing down rock o ...

. In the Sailing Directions of 1969 Hallie Jackson Reef is described as a reef 24 feet deep, at 9°44'S, 166°07'E. The corresponding current (2017) publication no longer has any mention of the reef.

Local population

The Duff Islands were settled by the

Lapita people The Lapita culture is the name given to a Neolithic Austronesian peoples, Austronesian people and their material culture, who settled Island Melanesia via a seaborne migration at around 1600 to 500 BCE. They are believed to have originated from ...

about 900 BC. They were followed by Melanesians and then Polynesians in the mid-1400s. The modern inhabitants of the Duff Islands are Polynesians, and their language,

Vaeakau-Taumako Vaeakau-Taumako (formerly known as ''Pileni'') is a Polynesian language spoken in some of the Reef Islands as well as in the Taumako Islands (also known as the Duff Islands) in the Temotu province of the Solomon Islands. The language is spoke ...

, is a member of the Samoic branch of

Polynesian languages The Polynesian languages form a genealogical group of languages, itself part of the Oceanic branch of the Austronesian family. There are 38 Polynesian languages, representing 7 percent of the 522 Oceanic languages, and 3 percent of the Austro ...

. On the islands of Duff live about 500 people. The traditional way of life consists of subsistence farming and fishing. Taumako has no roads, airport, telephones, or electricity. Contact with outsiders comes by battery-powered marine radio and the occasional cargo ship.

European Contact

The first recorded sighting by Europeans of the Duff Islands was by the Spanish expedition of

Pedro Fernández de Quirós Pedro is a masculine given name. Pedro is the Spanish, Portuguese, and Galician name for '' Peter''. Its French equivalent is Pierre while its English and Germanic form is Peter. The counterpart patronymic surname of the name Pedro, meaning ...

where it anchored on 8 April 1606. Its inhabitants named the islands as ''Taumako''. They were charted by Quirós as Nuestra Señora del Socorro (Our Lady of Succour in Spanish).Kelly, Celsus, O.F.M. ''La Austrialia del Espiritu Santo. The Journal of Fray Martín de Munilla O.F.M. and other documents relating to the Voyage of Pedro Fernández de Quirós to the South Sea (1605-1606) and the Franciscan Missionary Plan (1617-1627)'' Cambridge, 1966, p.39,62. The Duff Islands were named after missionary ship ''Duff'', captained by

James Wilson James Wilson may refer to: Politicians and government officials Canada *James Wilson (Upper Canada politician) (1770–1847), English-born farmer and political figure in Upper Canada * James Crocket Wilson (1841–1899), Canadian MP from Quebe ...

, which reached them in 1797.

Traditional navigation

Studies of David Lewis and Marianne (Mimi) George identified that traditional

Polynesian navigation Polynesian navigation or Polynesian wayfinding was used for thousands of years to enable long voyages across thousands of kilometers of the open Pacific Ocean. Polynesians made contact with nearly every island within the vast Polynesian Triangl ...

al techniques were still preserved in these islands.

References

Duff Islands, Solomon Islands
solomonislands.com.sb * Ben Finney and Sam Low, "Navigation", in K.R. Howe (ed.), ''Vaka Moana: Voyages of the Ancestors'', Bateman, 2007. ;Specific

External links