The Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme was begun in 1938 in the western

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

ocean and was the last attempt at human colonisation within the

British Empire The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts e ...

History

Conceived by Henry E. "Harry" Maude, lands commissioner of the

Gilbert and Ellice Islands Colony The Gilbert and Ellice Islands (GEIC as a colony) in the Pacific Ocean were part of the British Empire from 1892 to 1976. They were a protectorate from 1892 to 12 January 1916, and then a colony until 1 January 1976. The history of the colony w ...

, and approved by

His Excellency Excellency is an honorific style given to certain high-level officers of a sovereign state, officials of an international organization, or members of an aristocracy. Once entitled to the title "Excellency", the holder usually retains the ri ...

Sir Harry Luke,

Governor of Fiji Fiji was a British Crown colony from 1874 to 1970, and an independent dominion in the Commonwealth from 1970 to 1987. During this period, the head of state was the British monarch, but in practice his or her functions were normally exercised loca ...

and

High Commissioner of the Western Pacific The British Western Pacific Territories (BWPT) was the name of a colonial entity, created in 1877, for the administration, under a single representative of the British Crown, styled High Commissioner for the Western Pacific, of a series of Paci ...

. The goal of the project was to reduce

overpopulation Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale ...

in the southern

Gilbert Islands The Gilbert Islands ( gil, Tungaru;Reilly Ridgell. ''Pacific Nations and Territories: The Islands of Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia.'' 3rd. Ed. Honolulu: Bess Press, 1995. p. 95. formerly Kingsmill or King's-Mill IslandsVery often, this n ...

by developing three mostly uninhabited

atoll An atoll () is a ring-shaped island, including a coral rim that encircles a lagoon partially or completely. There may be coral islands or cays on the rim. Atolls are located in warm tropical or subtropical oceans and seas where corals can gro ...

s in the

Phoenix Islands The Phoenix Islands, or Rawaki, are a group of eight atolls and two submerged coral reefs that lie east of the Gilbert Islands and west of the Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean, north of Samoa. They are part of the Republic of Kiri ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arch ...

: #

Nikumaroro Nikumaroro, previously known as Kemins Island or Gardner Island, is a part of the Phoenix Islands, Kiribati, in the western Pacific Ocean. It is a remote, elongated, triangular coral atoll with profuse vegetation and a large central marine lagoo ...

(Gardner) # Manra (Sydney) #

Orona Orona atoll, also known as Hull Island, is one of the Phoenix Islands in the Republic of Kiribati. It measures approximately by , and like Kanton, is a narrow ribbon of land surrounding a sizable lagoon with depths of . Numerous passages connec ...

(Hull) A secondary goal was to enhance the British presence in the western Pacific in response to growing

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

influence through the

Guano Islands Act The Guano Islands Act (, enacted August 18, 1856, codified at §§ 1411-1419) is a United States federal law passed by the U.S. Congress that enables citizens of the United States to take possession, in the name of the United States, of unclai ...

, especially on Canton (later Kanton), where a commercial

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 was being established. The three atolls, Sydney, Hull, and Gardner, were renamed in Gilbertese as

Manra Island Manra (previously: ''Sydney Island''), is one of the Phoenix Islands in the Republic of Kiribati. It lies at . longitude, and has an area of . and an elevation of approximately six metres. Together with the seven other Phoenix Islands, it for ...

Orona Atoll Orona atoll, also known as Hull Island, is one of the Phoenix Islands in the Republic of Kiribati. It measures approximately by , and like Kanton, is a narrow ribbon of land surrounding a sizable lagoon with depths of . Numerous passages connec ...

, and

respectively. Colonisation efforts by Gilbertese settlers were almost immediately hampered by the onset of the

Second World War 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 vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

, the islands' isolation and the 1941 death on Nikumaroro of the project's officer in charge, 29-year-old

civil servant The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil servants hired on professional merit rather than appointed or elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leaders ...

Gerald Gallagher Gerald Bernard Gallagher (6 July 1912 – 27 September 1941, Gardner Island) was a British government employee, noted as the first officer-in-charge of the Phoenix Islands Settlement Scheme, the last colonial expansion of the British Empire.King ...

Abandonment

After 1945 the three settlements continued to struggle with supply problems, limited markets for

copra Copra (from ) is the dried, white flesh of the coconut from which coconut oil is extracted. Traditionally, the coconuts are sun-dried, especially for export, before the oil, also known as copra oil, is pressed out. The oil extracted from co ...

, the settlements' only major product, and

drought A drought is defined as drier than normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, an ...

, until the British government determined the colony could not be self-sustaining and evacuated the settlers in 1963, ending the project. The

are part of

Kiribati Kiribati (), officially the Republic of Kiribati ( gil, ibaberikiKiribati),Kiribati
''The Wor ...

and in 2005 were officially uninhabited except for a few families on

Kanton Island Canton Island (also known as Kanton or Abariringa), previously known as Mary Island, Mary Balcout's Island or Swallow Island, is the largest, northernmost, and , the sole inhabited island of the Phoenix Islands, in the Republic of Kiribati. It i ...

(

census A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...

population 61 in 2000 and 41 in 2005).

References

External links

* * {{cite journal , url= http://tighar.org/Projects/Earhart/Archives/Research/Bulletins/25_GallagherNiku/25_GallagherNiku.html , title= Gallagher of Nikumaroro: The Last Expansion of the British Empire , first= Thomas F. , last= King , publisher=

TIGHAR The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR) is an American nonprofit organization based in Pennsylvania. It was founded by Richard Gillespie in 1985. According to TIGHAR's Federal Tax Exemption Form 990 for Non Profits, the or ...

, journal= Earhart Project Research Bulletin , date= Aug 1, 2000 British colonisation of Oceania History of Kiribati 1938 in the Gilbert and Ellice Islands Settlement schemes Guano Islands Act Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) Gilbert and Ellice Islands

History

Abandonment

See also

References

External links