Starbuck Island

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Lore & Background

James Henderson, merchant captain of the East India Company ship Hercules, sighted the island in 1819 while sailing from South America to Calcutta, India. Soon after his arrival a local newspaper, The Calcutta Journal (or Political, Commercial, and Literary Gazette), published Henderson's report of three islands which he had encountered during his voyage, but did not state the exact date for his sighting of modern Starbuck Island. Henry Evans Maude estimated that this may have been in early February 1819. The next captain known to have seen it was Obed Starbuck, captain of the whaler Hero out of Nantucket, on September 5, 1823. The island was sighted again on December 12, 1823 by Obed's first cousin, Valentine Starbuck, the American-born master of the British whaling ship L'Aigle. L'Aigle was carrying King Kamehameha II of Hawaii and Queen Kamāmalu and their retinue to England. Valentine Starbuck is the first non-Pacific Islander known to have set foot on the island. The island was finally charted in 1825 by Captain The 7th Lord Byron (a cousin of the famous poet). Byron, commanding the British warship HMS Blonde, was returning to London from a special mission to Honolulu to repatriate the remains of the Hawaiian royal couple, King Kamehameha II and Queen Kamāmalu, who had died of measles while trying to visit King George IV. Lord Byron also sighted and charted Mauke and Malden Island, which he named after his surveying officer.

Reader's Guide

Starbuck Island was claimed by the United States under the 1856 Guano Islands Act, but was controlled by Britain after 1866, when possession was taken by Commodore Swinburn of HMS Mutine. The island was mined for phosphate between 1870 and 1893. It formed part of the British Gilbert and Ellice Islands colony prior to the independence of Kiribati in 1979. American claims to the atoll were formally vacated in the Treaty of Tarawa, signed the same year. At its highest point, the island rises to only about 5 meters. Due to its low profile and dangerous surrounding reefs, a number of ships were wrecked at Starbuck Island in the late 19th century. The French transport Euryale wrecked there in March 1870 and the crew was marooned on the atoll for 35 days. The experience allowed the captain of Euryale, future contre-admiral Albert des Portes, to finally chart the correct geographical location of the island. All members of the crew were eventually rescued and returned to France. On August 7, 1896 the Norwegian ship Seladon was wrecked against the barrier. The crew went into the lifeboats and drifted for 30 days until they landed on the island of Niulakita, Tuvalu. They lived together with a few natives for 10 months until they were rescued by a passing ship. Starbuck Island has been designated as the Starbuck Island Wildlife Sanctuary. In 2014 the Kiribati government established a 12-nautical-mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands: Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck.

Did You Know?

• One worker during the island's guano-mining days sank up to his neck in salty mud before being rescued.
• The French transport Euryale wrecked in March 1870 and the crew was marooned for 35 days.
• The Norwegian ship Seladon wrecked on August 7, 1896; the crew drifted 30 days to Niulakita, Tuvalu, and lived there 10 months before rescue.
• Valentine Starbuck, master of L'Aigle, is the first non-Pacific Islander known to have set foot on the island.
• The island's sooty tern colony is estimated at 1.5 million pairs, with other accounts estimating three to six million birds.