Southern Thule
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| Geography | |
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| Location | Southern Atlantic Ocean |
| Coordinates | 59°25′16″S 27°13′49″W / 59.42115°S 27.23041°WCoordinates: 59°25′16″S 27°13′49″W / 59.42115°S 27.23041°W |
| Archipelago | South Sandwich Islands |
| Administration | |
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United Kingdom
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| South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands | |
Southern Thule is a collection of the three southernmost islands in the South Sandwich Islands: Bellingshausen, Cook, and Thule (Morrell). The Southern Thule territory is claimed by Argentina and the United Kingdom. The island group is barren, windswept, bitterly cold, and uninhabited. It has an extensive exclusive economic zone rich in marine living resources managed as part of the SGSSI fisheries. The Admiralty's Antarctic Pilot says that Southern Thule is part of an old sunken volcano, and is covered with ash and penguin guano. There are seals, petrels, and a bank of kelp just offshore, especially around a small inlet on Morrell called Ferguson Bay.
The island group was first sighted in 1775 by the expedition of James Cook, who named it Southern Thule because it seemed to lie at very much the extreme end of the world (see Ultima Thule). It was further explored in 1820 by Bellingshausen who established that it consisted of three separate islands.
In November 1976, a party from the Argentine Air Force landed on Thule, and, without informing the British Government, constructed a small military base complete with barracks and a concrete helicopter landing pad. They set up a weather station, a radio station, and a flagpole from which the Argentine flag flew. All this was done at the direction of the Argentine Government in order to back up their territorial claim to the South Sandwich Islands. The base was named Corbeta Uruguay.
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Wikipedia