Fairway Rock ( ik, Ugiiyaq) (
Census block 1047, Nome, Alaska) is a small
islet with mostly vertical rock faces in the
Bering Strait, located southeast of the
Diomede Islands and west of Alaska's
Cape Prince of Wales. Part of
Alaska, a
U.S. state, the islet has an area of 0.3 km
2 (0.12 mi
2). Known to
Inuit of the Bering Strait region in prehistory, Fairway was documented by
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
in 1778 and named by
Frederick Beechey
Frederick William Beechey (17 February 1796 – 29 November 1856) was an English naval officer, artist, explorer, hydrographer and writer.
Life and career
He was the son of two painters, Sir William Beechey, RA and his second wife, Ann ...
in 1826. Although uninhabited, the island is a nesting site for seabirds — most notably the
least and
crested auklet — which prompt egg-collecting visits from local indigenous peoples. The
United States Navy placed
radioisotope thermoelectric generator-powered environmental monitoring equipment on the island from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Geography
The granite mass that is now Fairway Rock, like the larger nearby
Diomede Islands, is the remnant of an earlier era of glaciation.
Fairway Rock is situated SSE of
Little Diomede Island and W of
Cape Prince of Wales, at .
The island is variously reported as from
to in length.
Rising steeply from the surrounding waters to above sea level, Fairway Rock can be easily seen from the mainland coast of Alaska at Cape Prince of Wales.
Because of its steep cliffs, it poses no additional maritime hazard.
The Bering Strait around Fairway Rock is relatively shallow — about in depth — and oceanographic transects show the island to lie near a current velocity minimum for the strait.
Ocean currents north of Fairway Rock are occasionally studied as an example of a real-world system where a
Von Kármán vortex street is generated.
[
]
Fairway Rock lies inside Alaska's
Nome Census Area and
Alaska Department of Fish and Game Wildlife Conservation Unit 22E.
It is conveyed to Inalik Native Corporation. Fairway Rock appears on
United States Geological Survey topographic maps in the Teller Quadrangle.
Flora and fauna
The island's bold cliffs are a haven for many
migratory birds. The indigenous peoples who have lived nearby for thousands of years come to the island to gather bird eggs in the spring. and have continued to do so as recently as the 1990s.
The island supports a breeding colony of about 35,000 seabirds, including some 25,000
least auklets and
crested auklets.
In 1925, the
tufted puffin (''Fratercula cirrhata''),
horned puffin
The horned puffin (''Fratercula corniculata'') is an auk found in the North Pacific Ocean, including the coasts of Alaska, Siberia and British Columbia. It is a pelagic seabird that feeds primarily by diving for fish. It nests in colonies, often ...
(''Fratercula corniculata''),
parakeet auklet
The parakeet auklet (''Aethia psittacula'') is a small seabird of the North Pacific. Parakeet Auklets used to be placed on its own in the genus ''Cyclorrhynchus'' ( Kaup, 1829) but recent morphological and genetic evidence suggest it should be pl ...
s (''Aethia psittacula''), and
Pallas' murre (''Uria lomvia arra'') were reported at Fairway Rock, nesting in the crevices of the island's cliffs. A 1960 account reports that Eskimo inhabitants of Little Diomede reported a
glaucous gull
The glaucous gull (''Larus hyperboreus'') is a large gull, the second-largest gull in the world. It breeds in Arctic regions of the Northern Hemisphere and winters south to shores of the Holarctic. The genus name is from Latin ''larus'', which a ...
(''Larus hyperboreus'') colony on Fairway Rock larger than that on Little Diomede.
The
Steller sea lion
The Steller sea lion (''Eumetopias jubatus''), also known as the Steller's sea lion and northern sea lion, is a near-threatened species of sea lion in the northern Pacific. It is the sole member of the genus ''Eumetopias'' and the largest of t ...
may also breed on Fairway Rock.
History
Discovery and establishment of outpost
Fairway Rock was sighted by Captain
James Cook
James Cook (7 November 1728 Old Style date: 27 October – 14 February 1779) was a British explorer, navigator, cartographer, and captain in the British Royal Navy, famous for his three voyages between 1768 and 1779 in the Pacific Ocean an ...
on August 8, 1778. It was named by the English naval officer and geographer
Frederick William Beechey upon sighting the island in July 1826. Unlike the names he gave to the
Diomede Islands, the name "Fairway" has persisted.
[
]
Fairway Rock was passed and mentioned within the accounts of
John Muir's voyage aboard the ''
Corwin'' in 1881
[
] and
Roald Amundsen aboard the ''
Gjøa'' in 1906.
What is considered the last offensive action of the
American Civil War happened in this area: the
CSS ''Shenandoah'' fell upon a fleet of
whalers working the waters near Alaska's Little Diomede Island and sank more than two dozen ships on June 22, 1865. This is chronicled in the book ''The Last Shot''.
In 1964, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker
USCGC ''Northwind'' (WAGB-282) visited the rock, and installed an unmanned, propane-powered oceanographic station in order to measure water flows across the Bering Strait. ''Northwind''s crew continued to help maintain the station until its closure.
[''Welcome Aboard'' USCGC ''Northwind''. Pamphlet. 1968. U.S.C.G, Thirteenth District, Seattle, WA. Retrieved: 15 April 2014.]
The radioisotope thermoelectric generator
On August 11, 1966,
the
US Navy placed a
strontium
Strontium is the chemical element with the symbol Sr and atomic number 38. An alkaline earth metal, strontium is a soft silver-white yellowish metallic element that is highly chemically reactive. The metal forms a dark oxide layer when it is ex ...
-powered
radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) atop Fairway Rock for "powering environmental instruments".
At this time Commander John C. LeDoux was in charge of
NavFac's shore based nuclear power program, whose over 200 trained men only had
one power plant to run. With a new NavFac Chief taking over soon, Commander LeDoux feared the program might be cancelled if it had no other applications. In his memoir LeDoux writes that, "like good marketers we produced a catalog of what was available and sent it to all Navy commands."
Within two weeks they received an urgent request for a generator at Fairway Rock.
Fairway Rock's then-current generator was propane-fueled and could not operate in the winter months. Since the generator powered "detectors on the ocean floor for submarine traffic heading North"
it was considered essential that it be replaced rapidly. However, moving the new generator from
Baltimore
Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...
to
Alaska to Fairway Rock would be a complicated process and LeDoux suspected that "
red tape
Red tape is an idiom referring to regulations or conformity to formal rules or standards which are claimed to be excessive, rigid or redundant, or to bureaucracy claimed to hinder or prevent action or decision-making. It is usually applied to g ...
" would delay the operation for a long time.
LeDoux was able to use contacts in the
AEC to get approval to move the generator in only four days, which he considered "a miracle in itself."
A weekly
Air Force flight to
Vietnam was able to take it to Alaska. Getting the generator onto the island itself proved more difficult, since there were no Navy helicopters in the area. A bush pilot was contracted, two refueling locations were set up by the
Army Corps of Engineers, and a
Coast Guard escort (
USCGC ''Northwind'' (WAGB-282)) was assigned, allowing the journey over the
Bering Strait to be made safely.
[
] In the end, the project only took 10 days and "was done with no money or paperwork – mostly phone calls and personal visits." LeDoux was impressed that a project involving so many disparate military and non-military parties could be carried off in such a short span of time.
The device, developed by
Martin Marietta
The Martin Marietta Corporation was an American company founded in 1961 through the merger of Glenn L. Martin Company and American-Marietta Corporation. In 1995, it merged with Lockheed Corporation to form Lockheed Martin.
History
Martin Mari ...
, was the first commercially developed instrument of its kind deployed for unattended field use by the U.S. government. This use was cited in 1978
congressional hearings
A United States congressional hearing is the principal formal method by which United States congressional committees collect and analyze information in the early stages of legislative policymaking. Whether confirmation hearings (a procedure unique ...
on potential uses for
nuclear waste.
In 1981 two additional RTGs were added. All three RTGs were removed from the rock in 1995
[ in a joint Army/Navy operation with Chinook helicopters from B Company, 4th Battalion, 123rd Aviation Regiment, the "Sugar Bears" of Fort Wainwright, AK.
The three RTGs were transported from Fort Wainwright, AK to the Richland Consolidation Facility at Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington state for disposal.][U.S. NuclearRegulatory Commission. Locations of Low-Level Waste Disposal Facilities http://www.nrc.gov/waste/llw-disposal/licensing/locations.html Retrieved: 18 May 2015.]
See also
* Rockall, a similar, even smaller rock island in the northern Atlantic Ocean
References
External links
US Navy Arctic Submarine Laboratory
Summer 1986 Photo
Spring 1989 Photo
* Full text of ''Hazardous and toxic waste disposal : joint hearings before the Subcommittees on Environmental Pollution and Resource Protection of the Committee on Environment and Public Works, United States Senate, Ninety-sixth Congress, first session'' https://archive.org/stream/hazardoustoxicwa01unit/hazardoustoxicwa01unit_djvu.txt
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Islands of Alaska
Islands of Nome Census Area, Alaska
Islands of Unorganized Borough, Alaska
Bering Strait
Islands of the Bering Sea