Nikumaroro

Nikumaroro, formerly Gardner Island, is part of the Phoenix Group, Kiribati in the western Pacific Ocean, a remote, elongated, triangular coral atoll with profuse vegetation and a large central marine lagoon, located at Lat. -4.66, Long. -174.53. Nikumaroro is approximately 6 km long by less than 2 km wide. There are two narrow entrances through the rim, both of which are blocked by a wide reef which is dry at low tide.

The island was known by various names during the early 19th century (Kemins' Island, Kemis Island, Motu Oonga, Mary Letitia's Island). On August 19, 1840 the USS Vincennes (US Navy Exploring Expedition) confirmed its position and recorded the name as Gardner Island, originally given in 1825 by Joshua Coffin of the Nantucket whaler Ganges, probably after his father in law, U.S. Congressman Gideon Gardner.

In 1856 the island was claimed by CA Williams & Co of New London, Connecticut under the American Guano Act. Guano deposits weren't found and the claim was given up in 1882. Ten years later the island was claimed by the United Kingdom during a call by HMS Curacao. Almost immediately a license was granted to Pacific entrepreneur John T. Arundel for planting coconuts. Twenty-nine islanders were settled there, and some structures with corrugated iron roofs were constructed, but a severe drought resulted in the prompt failure of this project within a year, in 1893.

On November 29, 1929 the SS Norwich City, a large, empty British freighter with a crew of thirty-five men ran aground on the reef at the island's northwest corner during a storm. There were at least eight fatalities. The remaining crew camped near collapsed structures from the abortive Arundel project and were rescued after surviving several days on the island. The wreck of the Norwich City was a prominent landmark on the reef for seventy years, although by 2004 only scattered heavy debris, including the ship's massive steam engine, remained.

On December 1, 1938 members of the British Pacific Islands Survey Expedition arrived to evaluate the island as a possible location for either seaplane landings or an airfield. On December 20, more British officials arrived with twenty Gilbertese settlers in one of the last colonial expansions of the British Empire. Efforts to clear land and plant coconuts were distressed by a profound lack of drinking water. By June 1939 a few wells had been successfully established and there were fifty-eight Gilbertese settlers on Gardner, including sixteen women and twenty-six children. The island's early supervisor and magistrate was Teng Koata whose wife, according to local legend, had an encounter with the goddess Manganibuka on a remote part of the island. The British colonial officer, Gerald Gallagher (1912-1941), established a headquarters of the Phoenix Island Settlement Scheme in the village located on the island's western end, just south of the largest entrance to the lagoon. Wide coral-gravel streets and a parade ground were laid out, and important structures included a thatched administration house, wood-frame cooperative store and a radio shack. From 1944 through 1945 the United States Coast Guard operated a navigational LORAN station with twenty-five crewmen on the southeastern tip of Gardner, installing at least one quonset hut and some smaller structures.

The island's population reached a high of approximately 100 by the mid 1950s, however, by the early 1960s periodic drought and an unstable freshwater lens had so thwarted the struggling colony that most residents were evacuated to the Solomon Islands by the British in 1963, and by 1965 Gardner was officially uninhabited.

In 1971 the UK granted self-rule to the Gilbert Islands, which achieved complete independence in 1979 as Kiribati. That same year the U.S., after having recently surveyed the island for possible weapons testing, relinquished any claims to Gardner, which was officially renamed Nikumaroro, a name inspired by Gilbertese legends and used by the settlers during the 1940s and 1950s.

Nikumaroro is sporadically visited by biologists attracted to its extensive marine and avian ecosystems. Visitors often mention the island's oppressive equatorial heat, razor-sharp coral, dense foliage and extremely aggressive coconut crabs. Several species of shark and tursiops dolphins have been observed in the surrounding waters, and some of the fish species are toxic to humans during certain seasons. The ocean beyond the reef is very deep and the only anchorage is at the west end, across the reef from the village ruins, but this is safe only with the southeast trade winds. Landing has always been difficult and is usually accomplished south of the anchorage.

The non-profit International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery made numerous expeditions to Nikumaroro during the 1990s. There is documented, archaeological and anecdotal evidence (but no proof) that in July 1937 Amelia Earhart and Frederick Noonan landed and died on Gardner after failing to find Howland Island during the final stages of their ill-fated World Flight, including indications Earhart may have survived for several months before British survey parties began arriving in 1938.

Severe storms in 2002 destroyed most of the remaining structures on Nikumaroro, although Gallagher's grave can still be seen in the overgrown village site.