page_title: Caroline Island
section_title: Early sightings and accounts
hierarchical_section_title: Caroline Island / History / Early sightings and accounts
caption_attribution_description: English: Artists depiction of the 1883 total solar eclipse observed at Caroline Atoll, Line Islands Français&#160;: Représentation artistique de l'éclipse solaire totale observée sur l'île du Millénaire aux Kiribati
context_page_description: Caroline Island, is the easternmost of the uninhabited coral atolls which comprise the southern Line Islands in the central Pacific Ocean of Kiribati.
  First sighted by Europeans in 1606, claimed by the United Kingdom in 1868, and part of the Republic of Kiribati since the island nation's independence in 1979, Caroline Island has remained relatively untouched and is considered one of the world's most pristine tropical islands, despite guano mining, copra harvesting, and human habitation in the 19th and 20th centuries. It is home to one of the world's largest populations of the coconut crab and is an important breeding site for seabirds, most notably the sooty tern.
  The atoll is currently designated as a wildlife sanctuary. In 2014 the Kiribati government established a 12-nautical-mile fishing exclusion zone around each of the southern Line Islands.
  The atoll is best known for being the first place on Earth to receive sunlight each day during much of the year, and for its role in the millennium celebrations. A 1995 realignment of the International Date Line made Caroline Island one of the first points of land on Earth to reach January 1, 2000 on the calendar.
context_section_description: Ferdinand Magellan may have sighted Caroline Island on February 4, 1521.
  The next recorded sighting of Caroline Island by Europeans was on February 21, 1606, by Pedro Fernández de Quirós, a Portuguese explorer sailing on behalf of Spain; his account names the island "San Bernardo." The atoll was "rediscovered" on December 16, 1795 by Captain William Robert Broughton of HMS Providence, who gave the atoll the name Carolina (which later became Caroline) "in compliment to the daughter of Sir P. Stephens of the Admiralty." Caroline was again sighted in 1821 by the English whaling ship Supply and was then named "Thornton Island" for the ship's captain. Other early names for the atoll include Hirst Island, Clark Island, and Independence Island. Among other early visits which left behind accounts of the island are that of the USS Dolphin in 1825 (recorded by Lieutenant Hiram Paulding), and of a whaling ship in 1835 (recorded by Frederick Debell Bennett in his Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe From the Year 1833–1836).
  In 1846, the Tahitian firm of Collie and Lucett attempted to establish a small stock-raising and copra (coconut meat) community on the island, an operation which met with limited financial success. In 1868, Caroline was claimed by the British vessel HMS Reindeer, which noted 27 residents in a settlement on South Islet. In 1872, the island was leased by the British government to Houlder Brothers and Co., with  John T. Arundel as the manager (for whom one of the islets is named) John T. Arundel  and Co. took over the lease in 1881. In 1885 Arundel established a coconut plantation, however the coconut palms suffered from disease and the plantation failed. The settlement on the island lasted until 1904, when the six remaining Polynesians were relocated to Niue.
  Houlder Brothers and Co., under the management of Arundel, also conducted minimal guano mining on the island from 1874. In 1881, Arundel also   took over the guano mining, which supplied a total of about 10,000 tons of phosphate until supplies were exhausted around 1895.
  In 1883, an expedition of American astronomers traveled from Peru to Caroline Island aboard the USS Hartford to observe a total solar eclipse of 1883 on May 6. A French expedition also observed the eclipse from Caroline, and the United States Navy mapped the atoll. Johann Palisa, a member of the expedition, discovered an asteroid later that year which he named Carolina "in remembrance of his visit to [the] island."
caption: French and American expeditions converged on Caroline Island in May 1883 to observe an unusually long total solar eclipse. An expedition member made this drawing.
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