Ducie Island (/ˈdjuːsi/; Pitkern: Ducie Ailen) is an uninhabited atoll in the Pitcairn Islands group, which also includes Pitcairn, Henderson, and Oeno islands. Ducie lies east of Pitcairn Island and east of Henderson Island. It has a total area of 1.5 square miles (3.9 km²), which includes the lagoon. The island is 1.5 miles (2.4 km) long, measured from northeast to southwest, and about 1 mile (1.6 km) wide. The island is made up of four islets: Acadia, Pandora, Westward, and Edwards.
Although the atoll has little vegetation, it is a place where many bird species breed. More than 90% of the world’s Murphy’s petrel population nests on Ducie. Red-tailed tropicbirds and fairy terns also nest there, making up about 1% of the global population for each species.
Ducie was first discovered in 1606 by Pedro Fernandes de Queiros, who named it Luna Puesta. It was rediscovered in 1790 by Edward Edwards, captain of HMS Pandora, who was sent to capture mutineers from HMS Bounty. Edwards named the island Ducie in honor of Francis Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Baron Ducie. In 1867, the United States claimed the island under the Guano Islands Act, but the claim was never officially supported. The United Kingdom annexed the island on December 19, 1902, as part of the Pitcairn Islands. Because of its remote location and distance from Pitcairn, Ducie is rarely visited, with only one or two visits per year from cruise ships.
History
The island was discovered by a Spanish expedition led by Portuguese sailor Pedro Fernandes de Queirós on January 26, 1606, during a journey that began in Callao, Peru. With the support of Pope Clement VIII and King Philip III of Spain, Queirós was given command of the ships San Pedro, San Pablo, and Zabra. The fleet was called Los Tres Reyes Magos ("The Three Wise Men"). The goal of the expedition was to transport soldiers, religious leaders, and supplies to establish a colony in the Santa Cruz Islands.
Ducie Island was the first of eighteen discoveries on the trip. Queirós named the island Luna Puesta (meaning "moon that has set"). On the same day, he also saw two other islands, which he named San Juan Bautista ("St. John the Baptist") and La Encarnación ("the Incarnation"). It is unclear which island was Henderson and which was Pitcairn. Later, a map by Admiral José de Espinosa labeled Ducie as La Encarnación instead of Luna Puesta.
The island was rediscovered and named Ducie Island on March 16, 1791, by Captain Edward Edwards of the HMS Pandora. Edwards was sent from Britain in 1790 to capture the Bounty mutineers. He named the island after Francis Reynolds-Moreton, 3rd Baron Ducie, his former commander. After leaving Ducie, HMS Pandora turned north, so Edwards did not see the other islands. If the ship had continued its original course, it might have reached Pitcairn Island and found the Bounty mutineers.
In November 1820, the crew of the whaleship Essex, which had been attacked and sunk by a whale, mistakenly believed they had reached Ducie after a month at sea in two whaleboats. In fact, they had reached Henderson Island. In 1820, Captain Thomas Raine of Surrey made the first recorded landing on Ducie while searching for Essex survivors. In November 1825, Frederick William Beechey, who arrived on the HMS Blossom, wrote the first detailed description of the island. Beechey’s crew did not land on the island but sailed around it in small boats. Based on Beechey’s survey, the first map of the island was published in 1826. For nearly 100 years, this was the only map of the island.
In March 1867, John Daggett filed a claim on Ducie Island (calling it "Ducer Island") with the U.S. State Department under the Guano Islands Act. Daggett was asked to provide more information about the guano on the island, but he never did. According to a 1933 report, the claim was never accepted by the United States.
On June 5, 1881, the mail ship Acadia ran aground on the island while returning from San Francisco, Peru, after unloading its cargo. The ship’s master, Stephen George, planned a route that passed 15 to 20 miles east of Ducie. He left the first mate in charge at 6 a.m. Half an hour later, the first mate saw a white line in the water but assumed it was phosphorescence. Later, realizing it was land, he tried to avoid running aground but failed. The lookout claimed he thought the white land was a cloud. After several failed attempts to refloat the ship, the master sailed to Pitcairn Island in a ship’s boat. He was helped by the island’s residents and returned on an American boat to rescue the rest of the crew. The wreck was later studied in a Liverpool court, but the cause of the accident was never determined. A stone marker with a memorial was placed at the landing point on Acadia Islet and unveiled in 1990. The wreck lies offshore near the marker in about 10 meters of water.
In 1969, the atoll was proposed as an "Island for Science" and later recommended as a Ramsar Site. Major scientific expeditions to the island include the Whitney South Seas Expedition in 1922, the National Geographic Society-Oceanic Institute Expedition in 1970–71, and the Smithsonian expedition in 1975. More recent efforts include the MV Rambler Expedition by the Smithsonian in 1987, a Raleigh International expedition in 1987, and the Sir Peter Scott Commemorative Expedition to the Pitcairn Islands in 1991–1992. In 2012, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Enric Sala produced a documentary called Sharks of Lost Island, which included Ducie and the Pitcairn Islands. Because of its remote location, Ducie is rarely visited, though cruise ships make one or two landings each year. Unrecorded visits by freighters and tankers dumping waste in nearby waters are also known.
Although Captain Edward Edwards discovered the atoll in 1791, Ducie was not considered British territory. In 1867, the United States claimed Ducie under the Guano Islands Act, which allowed the U.S. to claim uninhabited islands with guano deposits if they were unclaimed by other countries. However, neither the U.S. nor the United Kingdom recognized each other’s claims. Both countries believed that discovery alone was not enough to claim sovereignty, and formal acts of possession were required. Ultimately, the U.S. did not claim most of its territories under the Guano Act.
Under the 1893 Pacific Order in Council, Pitcairn Island was governed by the High Commissioner of the British Western Pacific Territories in Fiji. On December 19, 1902, with the help of R. T. Simmons, the British Consul in Tahiti, Captain G. F. Jones and a group of Pitcairners visited nearby islands and annexed them to the United Kingdom. In 1903, Ducie was annexed in the same way and placed under the Western Pacific High Commissioner. Simmons reported that James Russell McCoy had told him the islands were always considered part of Pitcairn, and Pitcairners had visited them before. This claim is disputed by Donald McLoughlin, who argues that the distance between Pitcairn and Ducie and the lack of suitable boats make it unlikely Pitcairners visited Ducie.
On August 4, 1937, Captain J. W. Rivers-Carnac, commander of HMS Leander, reaffirmed British control over Ducie by raising the Union Flag and placing boards stating the island belonged to King George VI. Ducie was considered valuable for potential seaplane bases, but these plans never happened. In 1953, the Pacific Order in Council was no longer in effect, and the British Governor of Fiji was appointed Governor of the Pitcairn Islands, which became a separate British colony. A new constitution for the Pitcairn Islands was passed on February 10, 2010, stating that Ducie and other islands are ruled by a governor appointed by the British monarch. The governor must enforce the constitution’s rules.
Geography
Ducie is located 290 miles (470 km) east of Pitcairn Island and is claimed by some to be the southernmost atoll in the world at 24°41' S latitude. However, Elizabeth Reef in the Tasman Sea is at 29°57' S latitude, so the claim about Ducie being the southernmost atoll is uncertain. Ducie’s land area is 170 acres (69 ha), and its highest point, on the Westward islet, reaches 15 feet (4.6 m).
Ducie is 620 miles (1,000 km) west of the edge of the Easter Plate. It formed about 8 million years ago after Oeno Island was created by a hotspot that later caused a magma leak along the Oeno lineation. This leak spread through fracture zone FZ2, which formed during the third movement of the Pacific Plate. The atoll is part of the Oeno-Henderson-Ducie-Crough seamount, which scientists think may be connected to the southern Tuamotus.
The atoll has four islets: Acadia, the largest; Pandora; Westward; and Edwards. The smaller islets can be reached by foot from Acadia during low tide. The islets were named by Harald Rehder and John Randall during a 1975 expedition by the Smithsonian Institution.
Ducie has a central lagoon that can only be accessed by boat through a 100-yard (91 m) wide channel in the southwest, between Pandora and Westward islets. The lagoon is 52 feet (16 m) deep, with a sandy and coral-covered bottom. Whirlpools are common in the lagoon because caves allow water to drain from the lagoon into the ocean.
Pandora is one of the three coastline vertices for Point Nemo, the set of coordinates in the South Pacific Ocean that marks the farthest point from any land in three directions.
Flora
The atoll has very little vegetation because there is no fresh water. Only two types of vascular plants are known to grow there—among the smallest plant communities on any island. Acadia, Pandora, and Edwards Islets are covered with Heliotropium foertherianum, but Westward Islet is not. Pemphis acidula has also been found on Ducie; samples were collected during an expedition in 1991.
During Hugh Cuming’s expedition in 1827 and the Whitney South Sea Expedition in 1922, Lepturus grass was found on Acadia Islet. However, this grass disappeared when storm waves removed vegetation from the island before the Smithsonian expedition in 1975. Now, Heliotropium foertherianum is the main plant on the islets. Several species of coralline algae, including Porolithon onkodes, Porolithon gardineri, and Caulerpa racemosa, also grow there.
Fauna
The atoll is home to many types of birds, fish, and reptiles. In the lagoon, some living coral can be found, but most of the coral is dead. The main type of living coral is Montipora bilaminata (family Acroporidae). Scientists believe the dead coral was likely killed by cold water entering the area.
No land birds live on the atoll, but many seabirds breed there. Birds that nest on the atoll include the red-billed tropicbird, red-tailed tropicbird, white tern, great frigatebird, masked booby, and red-footed booby. Wintering bristle-thighed curlews have also been seen. Several types of terns, such as the sooty tern, blue noddy, brown noddy, lesser noddy, and white tern, are present. Members of the family Procellariidae, including the Kermadec petrel, Trindade petrel, Murphy's petrel, and Christmas shearwater, also live there.
Ducie Island is especially important for Murphy's petrel, as more than 90% of the world's population of this bird breeds there. Around 3,000 pairs of Christmas shearwaters, about 5% of the global population, are found on the island. The red-tailed tropicbirds and white terns that breed on Ducie make up about 1% of their global populations. Phoenix petrels, which once lived on the atoll, are no longer there, as they disappeared between the Whitney expedition in 1922 and the 1991–92 Pitcairn Scientific Expedition. BirdLife International has recognized the island as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because of its populations of Murphy's petrel, herald petrel, Kermadec petrel, and Christmas shearwater.
The lagoon has about 138 fish species that also live in southeastern Oceania, the Western Pacific, and the Indian Ocean. The lagoon is known for its poisonous fish and dangerous sharks. Fish like the yellow-edged lyretail, blacktip grouper, and greasy grouper can cause ciguatera poisoning. The lagoon is also home to Galápagos sharks and whitetip reef sharks. The Galápagos shark is dangerous to humans, while whitetip reef sharks are rarely aggressive unless provoked. Five fish species are found only around the Pitcairn Islands: Sargocentron megalops (a type of squirrelfish), the spiny butterflyfish, the Henderson triplefin (a type of threefin blenny), an unnamed species of Alticus (a type of combtooth blenny), and an unnamed species of Ammodytes (a type of sand lance).
Lizards on the island include the white-bellied skink (Emoia cyanura), which was photographed in 1922, and a lizard reported in an expedition journal in 1935. The species of the 1935 lizard was uncertain but thought to be a gecko, possibly the oceanic gecko (Gehyra oceanica) or the mourning gecko (Lepidodactylus lugubris). The 1991–92 Pitcairn Islands Scientific Expedition found both the mourning gecko and the white-bellied skink. The only mammal known to live on Ducie is the Polynesian rat. In 1997, a project successfully removed these rats, led by Brian Bell (WMIL) and Graham Wragg (S/V Te Manu), to protect bird species threatened by the rats. Green sea turtles feed on Ducie, but they have not been seen to breed there.