Chesterfield Islands

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Chesterfield Islands (îles Chesterfield in French) is an archipelago of New Caledonia located in the Coral Sea, 550 km North West of Grande Terre the main island of New Caledonia. Chesterfield Islands are a 120 km long and 70 km broad structure composed with many islets and reefs.

Bellone Reef, 60 km South East of Chesterfied is geologicaly separarated from the Chesterfield archipelago but commonly included.

[edit] General

The Chesterfield Reefs or Islands, and sometimes Group, are the most important of a number of uninhabited coral sand cays, some still awash and liable to shift with the wind and others stabilized by the growth of grass, creepers and low trees, lying on a series of reefs comprising the Chesterfield Reefs and extending from l9˚ to 22˚ S between l58 l60 E in the southern Coral Sea halfway between Australia and New Caledonia. The Chesterfield Reefs are now part of the territory of New Caledonia while the islands farther west are now part of the Australian Coral Sea Territory.

Chesterfield Reefs complex consists of The Bellona reef complex to the south (South, Middle and N.W Bellona reef) and the Brampton Reef complex. They include the following main islet generally from the south to the north:

Observatory Cay (21˚ 24 S, l58˚ 5l E), 800m long and 2m high, lies on the Middle Bellona Reefs at the southern end of the Chesterfield Reefs and 180 nm east of Kenn Reef.

Loop Islet (l9˚ 59´ S, l58˚ 28´ E), which lies 85 nm farther north near the south end of the central islands of Chesterfield Reefs, is a small, flat, bushy islet 3m high where a permanent automatic weather station was established by the Service Météorologique de Nouméa in October l968. Terry Walker reported the presence of a grove of Casuarinas in 1990.

Anchorage Islets are a group of islets five nautical miles north of Loop Islet. The third from the north, about 400m long and l2m high, shelters the best anchorage.

Long Island (l9˚ 53´ S, l58˚ l9´ E), 10 nm NW of Loop Islet, is the largest of the Chesterfield Islands, and is l400 to l800m long but no more than l00m across and 9m high. Although wooded in the l850s, it was stripped during guano extraction in the l870s and was said to be covered in grass with only two coconut trees and some ruins at the south end early in the last century. The vegetation was growing again by l957 when the remaining ruins were confused with those of a temporary automatic meteorological station established in the same area by the Americans between l944 48. Terry Walker reported that by 1990 there was a ring of low Tournefortia trees growing around the margin, herbs, grass and shrubs in the interior, and still a few exotic species including coconuts.

One-to-three nautical miles south of Long Island and Loop Islet there are three small low islets up to 400m across followed, after a narrow channel, by Passage or Bennett Island, which is l2m high and was a whaling station in the first half of the last century. Several sand cays lie on the reef southeast of the islet.

The two Avon Isles (l9˚ 32´ S, l58˚ l5´ E), some l88m in diameter and 5m high to the top of the dense vegetation, are situated 21 nm north of Long Island.

Renard Island (l9˚ l4´ S, l58˚ 58´ E) lies 45 nm NE of the Avon Isles and is 273m long, l80m across and also 6m high to the top of the bushes.

Bampton Island (l9˚ 08´ S, l58˚ 38´ E) lies on Bampton Reefs 20 nm NW of Renard Island. It is 180m long, ll0m across and 5m high. It had trees when discovered in l793, but has seldom been visited since then except by castaways.

Herald’s Beacon Islet (l7˚ 25´ S, l55˚ 52´ E), l70m by l20m and 2m high, lies on Mellish Reef 180 nm NW of Bampton Island.

There are also many cays on Lihou Reef halfway between Mellish Island and the coast of Queensland and more reefs to the northwest.

[edit] History

Booby Reef in the centre of the eastern chain of reefs and islets comprising Chesterfield Reefs appears to have been discovered first by Lt. Henry Lidgbird Ball in HMS Supply on the way from Sydney to Batavia in l790. The reefs to the south were found next by Mathew Boyd in the convict ship Bellona on his way from Sydney to Canton in February March l793. The following June, William Wright Bampton became embayed for five days in the reefs at the north end of Chesterfield Reefs in the Indiaman Shah Hormuzeer with Mathew Bowes Alt in the whaler Chesterfield, and reported two islets with trees and “a number of birds of different species around the ships, several of them the same kind as at Norfolk Island”.

The reefs continued to present a hazard to shipping plying between Australia and Canton or India (where cargo was collected on the way home to Europe) and in due course the southern reefs were surveyed by Captain H.M. Denham (l860) in the Herald in l858 60, who made natural history notes discussed below, and the northern ones by Lt G.E.Richards in HMS Renard in l878 and the French the following year.

The area was also visited by increasing numbers of whalers during the off season in New Zealand in search of the many wintering Humpbacked and fewer Sperm Whales in the middle of the 19th century. Thiercelin (l866) reports that in July l863 the islets only had two or three plants, including a bush 3 4 m high, and were frequented by turtles weighing 60 l00 kg. Many eggs were being taken regularly by several English, two French and one American whaler. On another occasion there were no less than eight American whalers (Moniteur de la Nouvelle Calédonie, 5 July l863). A collection of birds said to have been made by Surgeon Jourde of the French whaler Général d’Hautpoul on the Brampton Shoals in July l86l was subsequently brought by Gerard Krefft (l862) to the Australian Museum, but clearly not all the specimens came from there.

On 27 October, l862, the British Government granted an exclusive concession to exploit the guano on Lady Elliot Island, Wreck Reef, Swain Reefs, Raine Island, Bramble Cay, Brampton Shoal, and Pilgrim Island to the Anglo Australian Guano Company organised by the whaler, Dr. W.L. Crowther in Hobart, Tasmania. They were apparently most active on Bird Islet (Wreck Reef) and Lady Elliot and Raine Islands (Hutchinson, l950), losing five ships at Bird Islet between l86l and l882 (Crowther l939). It is not clear that they ever took much guano from the Chesterfield Islands unless it was obtained from Higginson, Desmazures et Cie, discussed below.

When in l877 Joshua William North also found guano on the Chesterfield Reefs, Alcide Jean Desmazures persuaded Governor Orly of New Caledonia to send the warship La Seudre to annex them. There were estimated to be about l85,000 cu m of guano on Long Island and a few hundred tons elsewhere, and 40 62% phosphate (Chevron, l880), which was extracted between l879 88 by Higginson, Desmazures et Cie of Nouméa (Godard, nd), leaving Long Island stripped bare for a time (Anon., l9l6).

Apparently the islands were then abandoned until Commander Arzur in the French warship Dumont d’Urville surveyed the Chesterfield Reefs and erected a plaque in l939. In September l944, American forces installed a temporary automatic meteorological station at the south end of Long Island, which was abandoned again at the end of World War II. The first biological survey was made of Long Island by Cohic (l959) during four hours ashore on 26 September, l957. It revealed among other things a variety of avian parasites including a widespread Ornithodoros tick belonging to a genus carrying arboviruses capable of causing illness in man. This island and the Anchorage Islets were also visited briefly during a survey of New Caledonian coral reefs in l960 and l962.

An aerial magnetic survey was made of the Chesterfield area in l966, and a seismic survey in l972, which apparently have not been followed up yet. In November l968 another automatic meteorological station was installed on Loop Islet where 10 plants were collected by A.E. Ferré. Since then the Centre de Nouméa of the Office de la Réchèrche Scientifique et Technique Outre Mer has arranged for periodic surveys and others when this installation is serviced.

Since 1982, Terry Walker had been carrying out methodical surveys of the Coral Sea islets with the intention of producing a seabird atlas, including a visit to the central islands of the Chesterfield Reefs in December 1990

[edit] Known Shipwrecks on the Reef

Chesterfield. Ship. Gave its name to Chesterfield reef, Pacific Ocean. [Loney]

Clarence. Whaling brig, 120 tons. Built at Clarence River, NSW, 1841; reg. Sydney 46/1841. Lbd 68 x 19.2 x 11 ft. Captain McCardell. Lost on the Chesterfield Bank, near the Bampton Shoals, 9 June 1844. After a voyage of 600 miles in four boats the crew reached safety although some of the crew were speared when they landed on the Queensland coast in search of water. The whaleer Woodlark assisted in the rescue of one of the boats. The schooner Elizabeth (qv) was lost attempting to salvage the Clarence the following year. [Loney][ASW1]

Eillan Donan. Brigantine, 270 tons. Built 1863; reg. Auckland. Believed lost on Chesterfield Reefs, December 1893. [Loney]

Euromedha. Barque, 345 tons. Built Sunderland, England, 1868. Struck the eastern edge of Bampton Reef and sank rapidly, 2 October 1869. Crew saved. [Loney]

Hamlet’s Ghost. Small vessel built from the salvaged timbers from the whaling schooner Prince of Denmark, recked on Chesterfield reef in 1863. [Holthouse]

Isabella. Barque, 734 tons. Built 1860. Wrecked on Chesterfield Reef, 4 July, 1875. One boat containing the captain and nine men set out for the mainland, six landed on an island and decided to await rescue while the seventeen Chinese passengers remained at the wreck. The captain’s boat was rescued but the other survivors were apparently forgotten. On 2nd January, 1876, only three of the six remaining white men were found alive when a schooner called at the island. Of the Chinese, ten were drowned, one died of starvation and one committed suicide. [Loney] Jessie. Barquentine, 247 tons. Ashore, wrecked, in a cyclone, at Long Island in the Chesterfield Group, while loading guano for Launceston, 18 February 1893. [Loney] Madeira Packet. Schooner, 108 tons. Captain Arnold. Left Sydney for New Zealand on a whaling cruise, on 4 September 1831; wrecked on Bampton Reefs, north of the Chesterfield Reefs, 575 miles due east of Bowen, Queensland, December 1831. The crew took to three boats; two it safely to Moreton Bay, the third disappeared. It appears that Captain Arnold had died on board before her loss. [Loney]

Prince of Denmark. Schooner, whaler, 69 tons. Built in 1789. Captain J.B. Bennett. Wrecked during a gale while approaching Chesterfield Reef, Pacific Ocean, 19 March 1863. The crew used the remains of the whaler to build a new boat, (which they called Hamlet’s Ghost), then set sail for Brisbane, leaving eleven native members of the crew on the reef with provisions for about eighteen months. They made Moreton bay on 17 June. The boat was later converted to a pleasure yacht. (No record of what happened to the eleven natives). [Loney] [ Holthouse]

Siskin. Ketch, 41 tons. Lost on the Chesterfield Group in the Coral Sea, early November 1896. [Loney]

Tamar. Barque. Lost near Chesterfield Reefs, Pacific Ocean, 1870. [Loney]

Venture. Schooner, 54 tons. Lost on Chesterfield Reefs, GBR, August 1879. [Loney]

Waireta. Schooner, 99 tons. Ashore in heavy weather at Long Island in the Chesterfield Group, 21 May 1892. [Loney]

Satellite Images OcenDots.com [1]