Henrietta Island
Encyclopedia
Henrietta Island is the northernmost island
Island
An island or isle is any piece of sub-continental land that is surrounded by water. Very small islands such as emergent land features on atolls can be called islets, cays or keys. An island in a river or lake may be called an eyot , or holm...

 of the De Long
De Long Islands
The De Long Islands are an uninhabited archipelago often included as part of the New Siberian Islands, lying north east of Novaya Sibir. This archipelago consists of Jeannette Island, Henrietta Island, Bennett Island, Vilkitsky Island and Zhokhov Island. These five islands have a total area of...

 archipelago
Archipelago
An archipelago , sometimes called an island group, is a chain or cluster of islands. The word archipelago is derived from the Greek ἄρχι- – arkhi- and πέλαγος – pélagos through the Italian arcipelago...

 in the East Siberian Sea
East Siberian Sea
The East Siberian Sea is a marginal sea in the Arctic Ocean. It is located between the Arctic Cape to the north, the coast of Siberia to the south, the New Siberian Islands to the west and Cape Billings, close to Chukotka, and Wrangel Island to the east...

. 40% of the island is covered with glacier
Glacier
A glacier is a large persistent body of ice that forms where the accumulation of snow exceeds its ablation over many years, often centuries. At least 0.1 km² in area and 50 m thick, but often much larger, a glacier slowly deforms and flows due to stresses induced by its weight...

s. Henrietta is roughly circular in shape and its diameter is about 6 km. The closest land is Jeannette Island
Jeannette Island
Jeannette Island is the easternmost island of the De Long Islands archipelago in the East Siberian Sea. It is the second smallest island of the De Long group, being only 2 km in length. It has an area of approximately . The highest peak of the island is...

, located to the ESE.

Cape Melville (Mys Mel'villya), Henrietta's northernmost landhead, is the northernmost point of the De Long Islands, a well as the northernmost land thousands of miles east and west.

Geology

Henrietta Island consists of folded Middle Paleozoic
Paleozoic
The Paleozoic era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic eon, spanning from roughly...

 basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

ic lava
Lava
Lava refers both to molten rock expelled by a volcano during an eruption and the resulting rock after solidification and cooling. This molten rock is formed in the interior of some planets, including Earth, and some of their satellites. When first erupted from a volcanic vent, lava is a liquid at...

 and proximal volcanogenic turbidite
Turbidite
Turbidite geological formations have their origins in turbidity current deposits, which are deposits from a form of underwater avalanche that are responsible for distributing vast amounts of clastic sediment into the deep ocean.-The ideal turbidite sequence:...

s overlain by Cenozoic
Cenozoic
The Cenozoic era is the current and most recent of the three Phanerozoic geological eras and covers the period from 65.5 mya to the present. The era began in the wake of the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event at the end of the Cretaceous that saw the demise of the last non-avian dinosaurs and...

 clastic sedimentary rocks. The Paleozoic strata have been intruded by numerous sills
Sill (geology)
In geology, a sill is a tabular sheet intrusion that has intruded between older layers of sedimentary rock, beds of volcanic lava or tuff, or even along the direction of foliation in metamorphic rock. The term sill is synonymous with concordant intrusive sheet...

, dikes
Dike (geology)
A dike or dyke in geology is a type of sheet intrusion referring to any geologic body that cuts discordantly across* planar wall rock structures, such as bedding or foliation...

, and sheets of basalt
Basalt
Basalt is a common extrusive volcanic rock. It is usually grey to black and fine-grained due to rapid cooling of lava at the surface of a planet. It may be porphyritic containing larger crystals in a fine matrix, or vesicular, or frothy scoria. Unweathered basalt is black or grey...

s, andesite
Andesite
Andesite is an extrusive igneous, volcanic rock, of intermediate composition, with aphanitic to porphyritic texture. In a general sense, it is the intermediate type between basalt and dacite. The mineral assemblage is typically dominated by plagioclase plus pyroxene and/or hornblende. Magnetite,...

-basalts, and porphyritic diorite
Diorite
Diorite is a grey to dark grey intermediate intrusive igneous rock composed principally of plagioclase feldspar , biotite, hornblende, and/or pyroxene. It may contain small amounts of quartz, microcline and olivine. Zircon, apatite, sphene, magnetite, ilmenite and sulfides occur as accessory...

. The basalts and porphyritic diorite have been dated by potassium–argon dating method to be about 310-450 million years old and the porphyritic diorite has been dated by the argon–argon dating method to be about 400-440 million years old. Gritstone
Gritstone
Gritstone or Grit is a hard, coarse-grained, siliceous sandstone. This term is especially applied to such sandstones that are quarried for building material. British gritstone was used for millstones to mill flour, to grind wood into pulp for paper and for grindstones to sharpen blades. "Grit" is...

s that are part of the Cenozoic clastic sedimentary rocks contain fragments of underlying Paleozoic strata along with significantly older gneiss
Gneiss
Gneiss is a common and widely distributed type of rock formed by high-grade regional metamorphic processes from pre-existing formations that were originally either igneous or sedimentary rocks.-Etymology:...

es, granite
Granite
Granite is a common and widely occurring type of intrusive, felsic, igneous rock. Granite usually has a medium- to coarse-grained texture. Occasionally some individual crystals are larger than the groundmass, in which case the texture is known as porphyritic. A granitic rock with a porphyritic...

s, quartzite
Quartzite
Quartzite is a hard metamorphic rock which was originally sandstone. Sandstone is converted into quartzite through heating and pressure usually related to tectonic compression within orogenic belts. Pure quartzite is usually white to gray, though quartzites often occur in various shades of pink...

s, and schist
Schist
The schists constitute a group of medium-grade metamorphic rocks, chiefly notable for the preponderance of lamellar minerals such as micas, chlorite, talc, hornblende, graphite, and others. Quartz often occurs in drawn-out grains to such an extent that a particular form called quartz schist is...

s.

History

American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 explorer and US Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...

 Lieutenant Commander George Washington DeLong
George W. DeLong
George Washington DeLong was a United States Navy officer and explorer.- Biography :Born in New York City, he was educated at the United States Naval Academy in Newport, Rhode Island...

 set out in 1879 aboard the Jeannette
USS Jeannette (1878)
The first USS Jeannette was originally HMS Pandora, a Philomel-class gunvessel of the Royal Navy, and was purchased in 1875 by Sir Allen Young for his arctic voyages in 1875-1876. The ship was purchased in 1878 by James Gordon Bennett, Jr., owner of the New York Herald; and renamed Jeannette...

, hoping to reach Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island
Wrangel Island is an island in the Arctic Ocean, between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea. Wrangel Island lies astride the 180° meridian. The International Date Line is displaced eastwards at this latitude to avoid the island as well as the Chukchi Peninsula on the Russian mainland...

 and to discover open seas in the Arctic Ocean
Arctic Ocean
The Arctic Ocean, located in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Arctic north polar region, is the smallest and shallowest of the world's five major oceanic divisions...

 near the North Pole
North Pole
The North Pole, also known as the Geographic North Pole or Terrestrial North Pole, is, subject to the caveats explained below, defined as the point in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's axis of rotation meets its surface...

. However, the ship entered an ice pack near Herald Island
Herald Island (Arctic)
Herald Island or Gerald Island is a small, isolated Russian island in the Chukchi Sea, to the east of Wrangel Island. It rises in sheer cliffs, making it quite inaccessible, either by ship or by plane. The only sliver of shoreline is at its northwestern point, where the cliffs have crumbled into...

 in September 1879 and became trapped. The vessel drifted several hundred miles with the ice, passing north of Wrangel Island. In May 1881 it approached Jeannette Island
Jeannette Island
Jeannette Island is the easternmost island of the De Long Islands archipelago in the East Siberian Sea. It is the second smallest island of the De Long group, being only 2 km in length. It has an area of approximately . The highest peak of the island is...

 and Henrietta Island. According to The Annual Report of the Secretary of the Navy, for the Year 1882 (pg.16), "A sled party landed, hoisted the national ensign, and took possession in the name of the United States. The excursion, led by George W. Melville
George W. Melville
George Wallace Melville was an engineer of the United States Navy who became a rear admiral.-Civil War:Melville was born in New York City on 10 January 1841. After graduating from Brooklyn Collegiate and Polytechnic Institute, he entered the U.S...

, landed on June 2 or 3, constructed a cairn, and placed inside it a record of their visit.

During the 1914-15 Imperial Russian Arctic Ocean Hydrographic Expedition led by Boris Vilkitsky
Boris Vilkitsky
Boris Andreyevich Vilkitsky was a Russian hydrographer and surveyor. He was the son of Andrey Ippolitovich Vilkitsky....

, the Vaygach
Icebreaker Vaygach
Icebreaker Vaygach was an icebreaking steamer of moderate size built for the Russian Imperial Navy at St. Petersburg in 1909. It was named after Vaygach Island in the Russian Arctic....

approached Jeannette Island with the intention of mapping Jeannette and Henrietta Islands, but heavy ice blocked the approach. In 1916 the Russian ambassador in London issued an official notice to the effect that the Imperial government considered Henrietta, along with other Arctic islands, integral parts of the Russian Empire
Russian Empire
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917. It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia and the predecessor of the Soviet Union...

. This territorial claim was later maintained by the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

.

A Soviet polar station was established on Henrietta Island in 1937, and closed in 1963. Henrietta Island served in 1979 as the starting point for a Soviet expedition to the North Pole on skis

Some U.S. individuals assert American ownership of Henrietta Island based on the 1881 discovery and claim. A resolution of the Alaska State Senate in 1988 supported this claim. There also are various documents from the former Department of the Navy stating that the United States asserts sovereignty over the island. However, according to the U.S. Department of State in 2003, the U.S. government has never claimed Henrietta Island. In 1994, the Alaska
Alaska
Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait...

 State Supreme Court ruled in D. Denardo v. State of Alaska that Henrietta Island, along with several islands, is not part of Alaska.
But this ruling did not preclude that the island is a possession of the United States, for example as an unincorporated territory.

Physical description

Henrietta Island was described by the sled party from the De Long expedition in the following terms: "The island is a desolate rock, surmounted by a snow-cap, which feeds several discharging glaciers on its east face. Dovekies nesting in the face of the rock are the only signs of game. A little moss, some grass, and a handful of rock were brought back as trophies. The cliffs are inaccessible, because of their steepness.".

External links

  • Anisimov, M.A., and V.E. Tumskoy, 2002, Environmental History of the Novosibirskie Islands for the last 12 ka. 32nd International Arctic Workshop, Program and Abstracts 2002. Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research, University of Colorado at Boulder, pp 23–25.
  • Anonymous, 1923, Wrangel Island. The Geographical Journal, Vol. 62, No. 6. pp. 440–444 (Dec., 1923). (requires JSTOR
    JSTOR
    JSTOR is an online system for archiving academic journals, founded in 1995. It provides its member institutions full-text searches of digitized back issues of several hundred well-known journals, dating back to 1665 in the case of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society...

     access).
  • Headland, R.K., 1994, OSTROVA DE-LONGA ('De Long Islands'). Scott Polar Research Institute
    Scott Polar Research Institute
    The Scott Polar Research Institute is a centre for research into the polar regions and glaciology worldwide. It is a sub-department of the Department of Geography in the University of Cambridge, located on Lensfield Road in the south of Cambridge ....

    , Cambridge University. Lasted visited May 26, 2008.
  • Schirrmeister, L., H.-W. Hubberten, V. Rachold, and V.G. Grosse, 2005, Lost world - Late Quaternary environment of periglacial Arctic shelves and coastal lowlands in NE-Siberia. 2nd International Alfred Wegener Symposium Bremerhaven, October, 30 - November 2, 2005.
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