Ebon Atoll
NASA picture of Ebon Atoll
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 Ebon Atoll
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| Geography | |
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| Location | Eastern Micronesia, North Pacific |
| Coordinates | 04°38′00″N 168°43′00″E / 4.63333°N 168.71667°E |
| Archipelago | Ralik |
| Total islands | 22 |
| Area | 5.75 km2 (2.22 sq mi) |
| Highest elevation | 3 m (10 ft) |
| Administration | |
| Demographics | |
| Population | 706 (2011 ) |
| Ethnic groups | Marshallese |
Ebon Atoll (Marshallese: Epoon, [ɛ̯ɛbʲɛ͡ɔː͡ɛnʲ]) is a coral atoll of 22 islands in the Pacific Ocean, forming a legislative district of the Ralik Chain of the Marshall Islands. Its land area is 5.75 square kilometres (2.22 sq mi), and it encloses a deep lagoon with an area of 104 square kilometres (40 sq mi). A winding passage, the Ebon Channel, leads to the lagoon from the southwest edge of the atoll. Ebon Atoll is approximately 155 kilometres (96 mi) south of Jaluit, and it is the southernmost land mass of the Marshall Islands, on the southern extremity of the Ralik Chain. In documents and accounts from the 1800s, it was also known as Boston, Covell's Group, Fourteen Islands, and Linnez.
Ebon Atoll was a center for commercial whaling in the 19th century. The schooner Glencoe had been taken and its crew massacred by Marshallese at Ebon in 1851, one of three vessels attacked in the Marshal Islands in 1851 and 1852. There were several motives, and by some accounts the ship's crew had been abducting island women for sale to plantation owners in other destinations. Missionaries sent by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in Boston began missionary activities in the Marshall Islands in 1857, establishing a mission at Ebon. It was claimed by the Empire of Germany along with the rest of the Marshall Islands in 1884, and the Germans established a trading outpost. After World War I, the island came under the South Pacific Mandate of the Empire of Japan, which had a garrison there late in World War II.
At the end of WWII, the island Atoll came under the control of the United States as part of the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands until the independence of the Marshall Islands in 1986.
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