page_title: Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago / History
caption_attribution_description: English: image on page 84 of File:A Voyage of Discovery and Research in the Southern and Antarctic Regions Vol 1.djvu
context_page_description: The Saint Peter and Saint Paul Archipelago is a group of 15 small islets and rocks in the central equatorial Atlantic Ocean. It lies in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, a region of the Atlantic characterized by low average winds punctuated with local thunderstorms. It lies approximately 510 nmi from the nearest point of mainland South America; 625 km northeast of the archipelago of Fernando de Noronha; 990 km from the city of Natal; and 1,824 km from the west coast of Africa. Administratively, the archipelago belongs to Brazil and is part of the special "state district" of Fernando de Noronha, in the state of Pernambuco, in spite of the very large distance between the two island groups and the even larger distance to the state mainland.
  The islets expose serpentinized abyssal mantle peridotite and kaersutite-bearing ultramafic mylonite atop the world's highest and yet only second largest megamullion. This grouping is the sole location in the Atlantic Ocean where the abyssal mantle is exposed above sea level.
  In 1986, the archipelago was designated an environmentally protected area.
  This is now part of the Fernando de Noronha Environmental Protection Area.
context_section_description: On April 20, 1511, a Portuguese Navy fleet composed of six caravels under the command of Captain Garcia de Noronha discovered the islets by accident while on their journey to India. While navigating in the open sea late at night, the Saint Peter caravel, under the command of Captain Manuel de Castro Alcoforado, crashed against the islets. The crew was rescued by the Saint Paul caravel, forming the name given to the islets.
  On the morning of February 16, 1832, the rocks were visited by Charles Darwin on the first leg of his voyage on HMS Beagle around the world. Darwin listed all the fauna he could find, noting that not a single plant or even a lichen could be found on the island. Darwin found two birds, a booby and a noddy, a large crab that stole the fish intended for baby birds, a fly that lived on the booby and a parasitic tick. He found a moth that lived on feathers, a beetle, a woodlouse that lived on dung, and numerous spiders that he thought lived on scavengers of the waterfowl. Darwin felt that these rocks represented how life first took hold on a newly formed outcrop. Darwin was correct in noting that, unusually, these small islands were not volcanic, but were instead formed by a geologic uplift. Darwin's account formed the basis of a fictionalized episode in Patrick O'Brian's historical novel HMS Surprise, when the naturalist Stephen Maturin is briefly marooned and survives by drinking fouled rainwater and the blood of boobies.
  The then called “St. Paul's Rocks” were visited by James Clark Ross on 29 November 1839. He was in charge of an expedition to the Antarctic regions with two vessels, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror. Robert McCormick gave some geological and biological remarks on St. Paul's Rocks in the report on the expedition.
  Another famous person to visit the rocks was Ernest Shackleton, on his last expedition to Antarctica (1921–1922).
  In 1942, during World War II, the islets were declared to be part of the Federal Territory of Fernando de Noronha (which also included the Rocas Atoll).
  In early 1960, the rocks served as the starting-point and terminus for the first submerged circumnavigation of the world by the American nuclear-powered submarine USS Triton.
caption: Chart of 1839 by HMS Erebus
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