Late (island)
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Late Island is an uninhabited volcanic
island An island (or isle) is an isolated piece of habitat that is surrounded by a dramatically different habitat, such as water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, skerries, cays or keys. An island ...
southwest of
Vavaʻu Vavau is an island group, consisting of one large island ( ʻUtu Vavaʻu) and 40 smaller ones, in Tonga. It is part of Vavaʻu District, which includes several other individual islands. According to tradition, the Maui god created both Tongata ...
in the kingdom of
Tonga Tonga (, ; ), officially the Kingdom of Tonga ( to, Puleʻanga Fakatuʻi ʻo Tonga), is a Polynesian country and archipelago. The country has 171 islands – of which 45 are inhabited. Its total surface area is about , scattered over in ...
.


Geography

The small, 6-km-wide circular island of Late, lying along the Tofua volcanic arc about 55 km WSW of the island of Vavau, contains a 400-m-wide, 150-m-deep summit crater with an ephemeral lake. The largely submerged
basaltic andesite Basaltic andesite is a volcanic rock that is intermediate in composition between basalt and andesite. It is composed predominantly of augite and plagioclase. Basaltic andesite can be found in volcanoes around the world, including in Central Ameri ...
to
andesitic Andesite () is a volcanic rock of intermediate composition. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between silica-poor basalt and silica-rich rhyolite. It is fine-grained (aphanitic) to porphyritic in texture, and is composed predomina ...
volcano rises 1500 m from the sea floor, with its conical summit reaching 540 m above sea level. Cinder cones are found north of the summit crater, west and north of a semicircular plateau 100–150 m below the summit, and on the NW coast. A
graben In geology, a graben () is a depressed block of the crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German, meaning 'ditch' or 'trench'. The word was first used in the geologic contex ...
-like structure on the NE flank contains two large pit craters, the lower of which is partially filled by a saltwater lake. Only two eruptions have occurred in historical time, both from NE-flank craters, which produced explosive activity and possible lava flows in 1790 and 1854.


History

It was discovered by Spanish naval officer Francisco Mourelle de la Rúa on 27 February 1781, on board of the
frigate A frigate () is a type of warship. In different eras, the roles and capabilities of ships classified as frigates have varied somewhat. The name frigate in the 17th to early 18th centuries was given to any full-rigged ship built for speed and ...
''Princesa''. Six years later it was explored by French explorer
Jean-François de La Pérouse Jean-François is a French given name. Notable people bearing the given name include: * Jean-François Carenco (born 1952), French politician * Jean-François Champollion (1790–1832), French Egyptologist * Jean-François Clervoy (born 1958), Fre ...
. It was again visited by British naval officer Edward Edwards in 1791 that named it ''Bickerston''. In August 2019, a large raft of pumice was discovered just northeast of Late Island.


See also

*
List of volcanoes in Tonga This is a list of active and extinct volcanoes in Tonga. References * See especiallFigure 1 * D. Stanley; South Pacific handbook * Government of Tonga, official 1962 land survey {{reflist Tonga Volcanoes A volcano is a rupture in t ...
*
List of islands This is a list of the lists of islands in the world grouped by country, by continent, by body of water A body of water or waterbody (often spelled water body) is any significant accumulation of water on the surface of Earth or another plane ...
*
Desert island A desert island, deserted island, or uninhabited island, is an island, islet or atoll that is not permanently populated by humans. Uninhabited islands are often depicted in films or stories about shipwrecked people, and are also used as stereot ...


References


External links


Virtual Globetrotting: Late Island
* Uninhabited islands of Tonga Volcanoes of Tonga Volcanic crater lakes Vavaʻu Island restoration {{Tonga-geo-stub