Flint Island
Coordinates: 11°25′48″S 151°49′9.12″W / 11.43000°S 151.8192000°W
Flint Island is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific Ocean, part of the Southern Line Islands under the jurisdiction of Kiribati. In 2014 the Kiribati government established a twelve-nautical-mile (22-kilometre; 14-mile) exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands (Caroline (commonly called Millennium), Flint, Vostok, Malden, and Starbuck).
Flint Island is located about 740 kilometres (400 nautical miles; 460 miles) northwest of Tahiti, 190 kilometres (100 nautical miles; 120 miles) south-southeast of Vostok Island, and 220 kilometres (120 nautical miles; 140 miles) southwest of Caroline Island. The island is about 2.5 miles (4.0 kilometres) long and 0.5 miles (0.8 kilometres) wide at its widest point (4 km × 0.8 km (2.5 mi × 0.5 mi)). It has a land area of 1 square mile (2.6 square kilometres) and rises to a height of 25 feet (7.6 metres) above sea level. The island is surrounded by a narrow fringing reef and with no safe anchorage landing is difficult.
According to the U.S. Exploring Expedition (February 5, 1841), the island was thickly wooded with primeval forest, however the island is now mostly covered with planted coconut palms.
Flint island was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Ferdinand Magellan on 4 February 1521, and charted as Tiburones (Sharks in Spanish) because of the many sharks that sailors fished in it. Together with Puka-Puka (named San Pablo) they were named Islas Infortunadas (Unfortunate Islands in Spanish). A now-discredited theory held that the island was named after Captain Keen, who visited in 1835, but an entry in Krusenstern's Hydrographie der grössern Ozeane, published in 1819, makes it clear the island already had this name. Flint Island was claimed under the 1856 U.S. Guano Act, but it was apparently never occupied.
...
Wikipedia