Traversay Islands

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Coordinates: 56°36′S, 027°43′W

The Traversay Islands (56°36′S, 27°43′W) are a group of three islands – Zavodovski, Leskov and Visokoi – at the northern end of the South Sandwich Islands.

The group was discovered in 1819 by a Russian expedition under Bellingshausen, who named them for Jean-Baptiste Prevost de Sansac, Marquis de Traversay (1754–1831), a French naval officer who joined the Russian navy in 1791, at the request of an émigré Frenchman in Russian service, admiral Nassau-Siegen. He was Minister of Naval Affairs at Saint Petersburg, 1809–28, and chief promoter of Bellingshausen's Antarctic voyage. The name was previously transliterated as Traverse because it was incorrectly thought that the man commemorated was a Russian.

[edit] References

• LeMasurier, W. E.; Thomson, J. W. (eds.) (1990). Volcanoes of the Antarctic Plate and Southern Oceans. American Geophysical Union, 512 pp. ISBN 0-87590-172-7. 

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