Mwoakilloa (or Mokil previously named Wellington Island or Duperrey Island, after

Louis Isidore Duperrey Louis-Isidore Duperrey (21 October 1786 – 25 August 1865) was a French naval officer and explorer. Biography Early life Louis-Isidore Duperrey was born in 1786. Career He joined the navy in 1802, and served as marine hydrologist to Louis Cl ...

) is an inhabited

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 gr ...

in the central

Pacific Ocean 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 continen ...

. Geographically, it belongs to the

Caroline Islands The Caroline Islands (or the Carolines) are a widely scattered archipelago of tiny islands in the western Pacific Ocean, to the north of New Guinea. Politically, they are divided between the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) in the centra ...

and is a district of the outlying islands of

Pohnpei Pohnpei "upon (''pohn'') a stone altar (''pei'')" (formerly known as Ponape or Ascension, Proto-Chuukic-Pohnpeic: ''*Fawo ni pei)'' is an island of the Senyavin Islands which are part of the larger Caroline Islands group. It belongs to Pohnpei ...

of the

Federated States of Micronesia The Federated States of Micronesia (; abbreviated FSM) is an island country in Oceania. It consists of four states from west to east, Yap, Chuuk, Pohnpei and Kosraethat are spread across the western Pacific. Together, the states comprise a ...

. Mwoakilloa lies 153 kilometres east of Pohnpei and approximately 113 kilometres northwest of

Pingelap Pingelap is an atoll in the Pacific Ocean, part of Pohnpei State of the Federated States of Micronesia, consisting of three islands: Pingelap Island, Sukoru and Daekae, linked by a reef system and surrounding a central lagoon, although only Pinge ...

. The almost-rectangular atoll is 4.5 kilometres long and 2.8 kilometres broad. The atoll consists of the three islands ''Uhrek'', ''Kahlap'' (Capitol), and ''Mwandohn'', forming a central lagoon of approximately 2 square kilometres in area. Only the northeast island Kahlap is inhabited, with the town facing the lagoon. The total area of all islands is approximately 1.24 square kilometres. The population of Mwoakilloa decreased from 177 in 2000 to 147 in 2008. The inhabitants speak

Mokilese Mokilese also known as Mwoakilloan, Mwokilese, or Mwoakilese is a Micronesian languages, Micronesian language originally spoken on Mokil Atoll, Mwoakilloa, Federated States of Micronesia. Of the 1200 Mokilese speakers, only about 500 live on Moki ...

— similar to the

Pohnpeian language Pohnpeian is a Micronesian language spoken as the indigenous language of the island of Pohnpei in the Caroline Islands. Pohnpeian has approximately 30,000 (estimated) native speakers living in Pohnpei and its outlying atolls and islands with a ...

in the family of

Micronesian languages The twenty Micronesian languages form a family of Oceanic languages. Micronesian languages are known for their lack of plain labial consonants; they have instead two series, palatalized and labio-velarized labials. Languages According to Jackso ...

The name "Wellington Island" comes from the vessel '' Marquis of Wellington'', whose captain named the island after his vessel. The ''Marquis of Wellington'' was on her way to China, having

transported ''Transported'' is an Australian convict melodrama film directed by W. J. Lincoln. It is considered a lost film. Plot In England, Jessie Grey is about to marry Leonard Lincoln but the evil Harold Hawk tries to force her to marry him and she w ...

200 or so

convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convict ...

s to

Port Jackson Port Jackson, consisting of the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers, is the ria or natural harbour of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The harbour is an inlet of the Tasman Sea (p ...

, Australia, from Britain.

Transportation

Mokil Airfield is located on the southern end of Kahlap with a runway. The airfield offers no service and used by chartered flights by Caroline Islands Air.

References

External links

*
Mokil in the German Colonial Lexicon
(German)

Mokil airdrop

{{Authority control Atolls of the Federated States of Micronesia Islands of Pohnpei