Wolstenholme Island ( kl, Qeqertarssuaq)
is an
island in
Baffin Bay
Baffin Bay ( Inuktitut: ''Saknirutiak Imanga''; kl, Avannaata Imaa; french: Baie de Baffin), located between Baffin Island and the west coast of Greenland, is defined by the International Hydrographic Organization as a marginal sea of the Arct ...
, in
Avannaata
Avannaata (, da, Det Nordlige, lit=The Northern) is a municipality of Greenland created on 1 January 2018 from the bulk of the former Qaasuitsup municipality. It encompasses an area of 522,700 km2 and has 10,726 inhabitants.
Geography
In ...
municipality, off northwestern
Greenland.
The island lies west of the
Bylot Sound
The Bylot Sound is a sound in the North Star Bay, Avannaata municipality, northwest Greenland.
Geography
This channel separates Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Island from the Greenland mainland. Its minimum width is , between Wolstenholme Isl ...
off
Cape Atholl in the southern shore of the mouth of
Wolstenholme Fjord, south of
Saunders Island. It is smaller than the latter and made of
gneiss.
History
Under Commander
James Saunders HMS ''North Star'' sailed to the
Arctic in 1849 in the spring on a venture to search and resupply Captain
Sir James Clark Ross
Sir James Clark Ross (15 April 1800 – 3 April 1862) was a British Royal Navy officer and polar explorer known for his explorations of the Arctic, participating in two expeditions led by his uncle John Ross, and four led by William Edwa ...
' expedition, who in turn had sailed in 1848 trying to locate the whereabouts of
Sir John Franklin's expedition.
[Icy Imprisonment: The 1849 Voyage of the HMS North Star](_blank)
/ref>
Failing to find Franklin or Ross, Saunders's mission aboard the ''North Star'' consisted in depositing stores along several named areas of the Canadian Arctic coast and returning to England before the onset of winter. However, James Saunders's ship's progress was hindered by large amounts of ice in Melville Bay and it finally became trapped by ice off the coast of northwestern Greenland in North Star Bay. A paper left by Saunders in a cairn reads thus:
During the winter 1849–50 Saunders named numerous landmarks in that area, including Wolstenholme Island, while wintering in the frozen bay.
Adam Beck, John Ross' Inuit interpreter during his 1850 Third Arctic expedition, had told a grisly story —reportedly heard by him from Greenlandic Inuit— about a massacre of Franklin's men on Wolstenholme Island. Nevertheless, a thorough search of the island yielded no evidence and Adam Beck's story was discarded.
The bay was the site of a Cold War
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
nuclear accident when a B-52 bomber carrying four thermonuclear bombs crashed, spreading contaminated material over the area. A location south of Wolstenholme Island served as background reference.Plutonium in the environment at Thule, Greenland, from sampling in 2003
/ref>
Images
See also
*List of islands of Greenland
The following is an alphabetical list of the islands of Greenland. Many of these islands have both a Kalaallisut language name and a European language name.
Islands and archipelagoes
* Aaluik
* Aasiaat Archipelago
* Achton Friis Islands
* A ...
*70th meridian west
The meridian 70° west of Greenwich is a line of longitude that extends from the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean, North America, the Atlantic Ocean, the Caribbean Sea, South America, the Pacific Ocean, the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica to t ...
References
External links
Wolstenholme Island Greenland Coast painting
Islands of Greenland
Avannaata
{{Greenland-geo-stub