Grass Island ( es, Isla Pasto) is a conspicuous island lying across the entrance to

Stromness Harbour Stromness is an abandoned whaling station on the northern coast of South Georgia Island in the South Atlantic. It was the destination of Sir Ernest Shackleton's rescue journey in 1916. It is the central of three harbours in the west side of Stro ...

Stromness Bay Stromness Bay is a bay wide, entered between Cape Saunders and Busen Point on the north coast of South Georgia. Stromness Bay, like Leith Harbour takes its name from a location in Scotland, Stromness, on the Orkney Mainland. This is partiall ...

, South Georgia. It was known as "Mutton Island" as early as 1912, but since 1920 the name Grass Island has been consistently used. On the 22 and 23 April 1982, after a British

Special Boat Service The Special Boat Service (SBS) is the special forces unit of the United Kingdom's Royal Navy. The SBS can trace its origins back to the Second World War when the Army Special Boat Section was formed in 1940. After the Second World War, the Roya ...

team had been driven back by snow at Cumberland East Bay, as part of

Operation Paraquet Operation Paraquet was the code name for the British military operation to recapture the island of South Georgia from Argentine military control in April 1982 at the start of the Falklands War. The operation, a subsidiary of the main Operatio ...

a Troop of the Special Air Service was landed on Grass Island from HMS ''Antrim'', and set up an observation post in preparations for an attack on Argentine positions.Major Tommy Turtle, SAS soldier who took part in crucial operations during the Falklands War – obituary
of Tommy Turtle, ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...

'', 4 March 2021, accessed 6 March 2021 In 2000, the island became rat-free after a team from

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

helped in an extermination.

References

Islands of South Georgia Falklands War in South Georgia {{SouthGeorgia-geo-stub

See also

References