Tulagi, less commonly known as Tulaghi, is a small
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 isla ...
——in
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 ...
, just off the south coast of
Ngella Sule. The town of the same name on the island (pop. 1,750) was the capital of the
British Solomon Islands Protectorate from 1896 to 1942 and is today the capital of the
Central Province. The capital of what is now the state of Solomon Islands moved to
Honiara,
Guadalcanal, after
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...
.
The island was originally chosen by the British as a comparatively isolated and healthier alternative to the disease-ridden larger islands of the
Solomon Islands archipelago
The Solomon Islands (archipelago) is an island group in the western South Pacific Ocean, north-east of Australia. The archipelago is in the Melanesian subregion and bioregion of Oceania and forms the eastern boundary of the Solomon Sea ...
.
In October 2019, the government of Central Province signed a deal to grant the 75-year lease of the entire island of Tulagi to a Chinese company China Sam Enterprise Group. However, this was declared unconstitutional by the Solomon Islands parliament after a week and, consequently, the deal was cancelled.
Climate
History
The first recorded sighting by Europeans was by the Spanish expedition of
Álvaro de Mendaña on 16 April 1568. More precisely the sighting was due to a local voyage done by a small boat, in the accounts the
brigantine ''Santiago'', commanded by ''
Maestre de Campo
''Maestre de campo'' was a rank created in 1534 by the Emperor Carlos V, inferior in rank only to the ''capitán general'' and acted as a chief of staff. He was chosen by the monarch in the Council of State, and commanded a ''tercio''. Their powe ...
''
Pedro Ortega Valencia and having
Hernán Gallego as pilot.
[Brand, Donald D. ''The Pacific Basin: A History of its Geographical Explorations'' The American Geographical Society, New York, 1967, p.133.]
World War II
The
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the n ...
ese occupied Tulagi on May 3, 1942, with the intention of establishing a
seaplane
A seaplane is a powered fixed-wing aircraft capable of taking off and landing (alighting) on water.Gunston, "The Cambridge Aerospace Dictionary", 2009. Seaplanes are usually divided into two categories based on their technological characteri ...
base nearby (see
Japanese Tulagi landing). The ships in Tulagi harbor were raided by planes from the following day in a prelude to the
Battle of the Coral Sea.
Allied forces, primarily the 1st
Marine Raiders, landed on August 7 and captured Tulagi as part of
Operation Watchtower after a day of hard fighting.
After its capture by
United States Navy
The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...
and
Marine Corps forces, the island hosted a squadron of
PT boats for a year, which included
LTJG John F. Kennedy's ''
PT-109'' as well as other ancillary facilities. A small 20-bed dispensary was operated on Tulagi until its closure in 1946. The island also formed part of
Purvis Bay, which hosted many US Navy ships during 1942 and 1943.
Postwar
The present-day Tulagi has a
fishing fleet.
Scuba diving
Tulagi offers numerous
scuba diving
Scuba diving is a mode of underwater diving whereby divers use breathing equipment that is completely independent of a surface air supply. The name "scuba", an acronym for " Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus", was coined by Chr ...
locations. The wrecks of
USS ''Aaron Ward'',
USS ''Kanawha'', and
HMNZS ''Moa'' are close by, and the wrecks of
Ironbottom Sound are not much further off, to the south and west. These three ships were all sunk in the same Japanese naval air raid, part of the Operation "I" on April 7, 1943. The ''Ward'' lies upright and intact, its deck replete with artifacts, on a sandy bottom at .
Tulagi is developing a
tourism industry based on scuba.
References
{{Authority control
Former national capitals
Islands of the Solomon Islands
Populated places in Central Province (Solomon Islands)
Wreck diving sites