ATLAS OF REMOTE ISLANDS
Bouvet Island

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(Norway)

Atlantic Ocean

54° 25' S | 3° 21' E

NORWEGIAN Bouvevetøja

ENGLISH formerly Lindsay or Liverpool Island

49 km² | uninhabited

A WIDE EXPANSE of sea stretches south of the Cape Province, still unexplored by oceanographers. Right after the Agulhas Bank, all soundings break off. Painted a tropical white, the Valdivia steers its way southwards, taking a course that no ship has chosen in over fifty years. The area is not described on British sea charts; there is just one uncertain entry: a small archipelago beneath the 54th parallel, sighted by Bouvet, who took it for the cape of a continent to the south. Neither Cook nor Ross, nor Moore, found it again. Two whaling boat captains claim to have seen the island, but each give different co-ordinates. // The barometer drops and the wind rises to a storm, ten on the Beaufort scale, forcing them to heave-to. The skies darken and the petrels take position; the first ash-grey albatrosses with blackened heads and white-rimmed eyelids circle above the struggling ship in silent, ghostly swoops, like vampires. Caught by the swell, the steamship is tipped on its side many times, so sharply that the glass flasks in the laboratories crash out of their holders. The steam whistle sounds over and over again, and the icebergs hiding in the mist reply with their high, clear echoes. At last, the Valdivia arrives at the area shown as three islands on the Admiralty chart: Bouvet, Lindsay, Liverpool. Soundings indicate an undersea ridge, and the sun shining on the wall of clouds on the horizon creates the illusion of land. There is no sign of the island. // At midday on 25 November 1898, the first large iceberg hoves into view, gleaming majestically. At thirty minutes past three, the first officer cries, The Bouvets are in front of us! But what appears first in hazy, then in increasingly clear, outline only seven nautical miles to starboard is not a group but a single steep island in all its wild glory, with sheer walls of ice and glaciers cascading to sea level; an enormous field of firn. This is it, Bouvet Island, sought in vain by three expeditions, missing for nearly seventy-five years.