Chesterfield Islands - History

History

Booby Reef in the centre of the eastern chain of reefs and islets comprising Chesterfield Reefs appears to have been discovered first by Lt. Henry Lidgbird Ball in HMS Supply on the way from Sydney to Batavia (modern day Jakarta)in 1790. The reefs to the south were found next by Mathew Boyd in the convict ship Bellona on his way from Sydney to Canton (modern day Guangzhou) in February March 1793. The following June, William Wright Bampton became embayed for five days in the reefs at the north end of Chesterfield Reefs in the Indiaman Shah Hormuzeer with Mathew Bowes Alt in the whaler Chesterfield, and reported two islets with trees and “a number of birds of different species around the ships, several of them the same kind as at Norfolk Island”.

The reefs continued to present a hazard to shipping plying between Australia and Canton or India (where cargo was collected on the way home to Europe) and in due course the southern reefs were surveyed by Captain H.M. Denham (1860) in the Herald 1858–60, who made natural history notes discussed below, and the northern ones by Lt G.E.Richards in HMS Renard in 1878 and the French the following year. Denham’s conclusions are engraved on British Admiralty Chart 349:“These Plans and a mast‑head Lookout will enable a Ship to round to under the lee of the Reefs where she may caulk topsides, set up rigging, rate Chronometers, obtain turtle, fish and seafowl eggs. On some of the more salient reefs, beacons were erected by Captn Denham, and for the sake of castaways, cocoa‑nuts, shrubs, grasses & every description of seed likely to grow, were sown in the way to promote the superstructure; and it is most desirable that these Refuge‑ spots should be held sacred for universal benefit and not ruthlessly destroyed by the Guano‑seeker.”

The area was also visited by increasing numbers of whalers during the off season in New Zealand in search of the many wintering Humpbacked and fewer Sperm Whales in the middle of the 19th century. Thiercelin (1866) reports that in July 1863 the islets only had two or three plants, including a bush 3 4 m high, and were frequented by turtles weighing 60 to 100 kg. Many eggs were being taken regularly by several English, two French and one American whaler. On another occasion there were no less than eight American whalers (Moniteur de la Nouvelle Calédonie, 5 July 1863). A collection of birds said to have been made by Surgeon Jourde of the French whaler Général d’Hautpoul on the Brampton Shoals in July 1861 was subsequently brought by Gerard Krefft (1862) to the Australian Museum, but clearly not all the specimens came from there.

On 27 October 1862, the British Government granted an exclusive concession to exploit the guano on Lady Elliot Island, Wreck Reef, Swain Reefs, Raine Island, Bramble Cay, Brampton Shoal, and Pilgrim Island to the Anglo Australian Guano Company organised by the whaler, Dr. William Crowther in Hobart, Tasmania. They were apparently most active on Bird Islet (Wreck Reef) and Lady Elliot and Raine Islands (Hutchinson, 1950), losing five ships at Bird Islet between 1861 and 1882 (Crowther 1939). It is not clear that they ever took much guano from the Chesterfield Islands unless it was obtained from Higginson, Desmazures et Cie, discussed below.

When in 1877 Joshua William North also found guano on the Chesterfield Reefs, Alcide Jean Desmazures persuaded Governor Orly of New Caledonia to send the warship La Seudre to annex them. There were estimated to be about 185,000 cu m of guano on Long Island and a few hundred tons elsewhere, and 40 to 62% phosphate (Chevron, 1880), which was extracted between 1879 and 1888 by Higginson, Desmazures et Cie of Nouméa (Godard, nd), leaving Long Island stripped bare for a time (Anon., 1916).

Apparently the islands were then abandoned until Commander Arzur in the French warship Dumont d’Urville surveyed the Chesterfield Reefs and erected a plaque in 1939. In September 1944, American forces installed a temporary automatic meteorological station at the south end of Long Island, which was abandoned again at the end of World War II. The first biological survey was made of Long Island by Cohic (1959) during four hours ashore on 26 September 1957. It revealed among other things a variety of avian parasites including a widespread Ornithodoros tick belonging to a genus carrying arboviruses capable of causing illness in man. This island and the Anchorage Islets were also visited briefly during a survey of New Caledonian coral reefs in 1960 and 1962.

An aerial magnetic survey was made of the Chesterfield area in 1966, and a seismic survey in 1972, which apparently have not been followed up yet. In November 1968 another automatic meteorological station was installed on Loop Islet where 10 plants were collected by A.E. Ferré. Since then the Centre de Nouméa of the Office de la Réchèrche Scientifique et Technique Outre Mer has arranged for periodic surveys and others when this installation is serviced.

Since 1982, Terry Walker had been carrying out methodical surveys of the Coral Sea islets with the intention of producing a seabird atlas, including a visit to the central islands of the Chesterfield Reefs in December 1990.