Gough Island - History

History

The details of the discovery of Gough Island are unclear, but the most likely occasion is July 1505 by the Portuguese explorer Gonçalo Álvares. Maps during the next three centuries named the island after him. On some later maps, this was erroneously given as Diego Alvarez.

According to some historians, the English merchant Anthony de la Roché was the first to land on the island, in Spring 1675.

Charles Gough rediscovered the island in March 1731, thinking it was a new find. It has since been named for him.

It was named Gonçalo Alvarez, after the captain of Vasco da Gama's flagship on his epic voyage to the east, and under this name it was marked with reasonable accuracy on the charts of the South Atlantic during the following 250 years. Then, in 1731, Captain Gough of the British ship Richmond reported the discovery of a new island, which he placed 400 miles to the east of Goncalo Alvarez. Fifty years later cartographers realized that the two islands were the same and despite the priority of the Portuguese discovery, and the greater accuracy of the position given by them, "Gough's Island" was the name adopted.

In the early 19th Century, sealers sometimes briefly inhabited the island. The earliest known example is a sealing gang from the US ship Amethyst which remained on the island in 1806-1807.

Gough Island was claimed only in 1938, for Britain, during a visit by HMS Milford of the Royal Navy.