Postcard from Palmyra

The United States has many well-known offshore territories like Puerto Rico, Guam, and American Samoa. I have just had the pleasure of visiting one of the least known: Palmyra Atoll. One of the 12 most isolated islands in the world, Palmyra (above) is located about 1,052 miles south/southwest of Hawaii. It is only accessible by privately chartered plane (estimated $6,000 per person) or aboard a recreational yacht. I am a stowaway on the latter (to use the term "crew" would be a major stretch of the truth). Thanks to the wonders of satellite technology, this post thus hails from S/V Constellation (above), currently deep at sea.
The history of Palmyra Atoll is fascinating and little known. Originally claimed by Dr. Gerrit Judd of the United States, it was later taken by citizens of Hawaii for the benefit of Kamehameha IV, and was formally annexed to the Hawaiian Kingdom in April of 1862. (In 1897, as posted, Hawaii was annexed to the United States.)
The Atoll was privately owned until 1934, when it was placed under the Department of the Navy. The Navy built an air station there, and brought 5,000 men to the station during World War II. The Atoll is still littered with remnants of its military occupation; for example, entry on entire islands is forbidden due to unexploded ordinance.
After the war, the Fullard-Leo family, the most recent private owners of the Atoll, sued the military for return of the Atoll. In United States v. Fullard-Leo (1947), Supreme Court ruled in the family's favor. In 1990, the family leased the island to Peter Savio, who hired Roger Lextrait as caretaker. Lextrait had several animals on the island, one of them a dog named Dadu (left), which he trained to hunt small black-tipped reef sharks for food.
The dog remains on the island, and I personally witnessed him pounce on a shark. He didn't get it ... but then he's getting up in years.
In 2000,The Nature Conservancy purchased the Atoll, retaining one island as a research station for scientists, and the rest is managed by the Fish and Wildlife Service as a wildlife refuge. The total staff and visiting research teams at the time I was there brought the population of the Atoll, as shown at right, to a whopping sixteen people! It's practically a cosmopolitan center in the mid-Pacific. The scientific research being done there varies; from sea turtles to algae to mud, if it relates to the Atoll's ecology it is fair game. The scientists were kind enough to show us their lab work, and Amanda Myers from the Fish and Wildlife Service took us on what was, frankly, the most amazing snorkel trip of my life.
When the good people of Palmyra aren't working, they're playing at the "Palmyra Yacht Club," a structure predating the Nature Conservancy's tenure on the Atoll. The three rooms (one with an ancient weight set, one with a ping pong table and library, and the last with a BYOB bar (below left)) are covered in words of wisdom and signatures, like those below right, from the yachties who have been visiting the islands since the 1980s. It's quite a monument to adventurers the world over.
Palmyra made news in the 1970s when it was the site of the double murder of two pleasure cruisers, husband and wife Mac and Muff Graham.
The story is set out in Vincent Bugliosi's torturous 800-page book And the Sea Will Tell. Unless you are looking for a lengthy refresher in evidence law, this book should be skipped, though I understand there is a film version which might prove more palatable.
The two resultant murder trials took place in federal court, apparently pursuant to the Department of the Interior Order 3224, which gave all executive, legislative, and judicial authority over the Atoll to the Secretary of the Interior.
This authority notwithstanding, Palmyra seems as final as the final frontier can be these days.
My journey continues to Samoa, and I'll post regarding my adventures there when I make landfall.

(all photos (c); see here)

On November 15

On this day in ...
... 1978 (30 years ago today), in New York City, Dr. Margaret Mead died from cancer. She'd been born 76 years earlier in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to a father who was a finance professor and a mother who was a sociologist. While a graduate student at Columbia, Mead was mentored by the anthropologist Franz Boas. At age 23 she traveled to the South Pacific for field research on her dissertation (center left), eventually published as the perennial bestseller Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). She worked with New York's American Museum of Natural History, wrote a column for Redbook magazine, and spoke out on U.S. social issues. Having had the opportunity to hear a Mead lecture shortly before she died, this IntLawGrrl can attest that she was a powerful speaker.
... 1983 (25 years ago today), inhabitants in the north of an Aegean Sea island broke with inhabitants of Greek ancestry to the south, and declared the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus to be an independent state. Ever since, as a de facto matter, the U.N.-controlled buffer zone in blue on the map at right has marked the division of Cyprus. As a de jure matter, however, no country other than Turkey recognizes the breakaway territory as a state. On May 1, 2004, "the Republic of Cyprus became a full member" of the European Union. But Community law is "suspended in the area administered by Turkish Cypriots."

On July 10, ...

... 1985, shortly before midnight in Auckland Harbour, New Zealand, explosions 60 seconds apart exploded the stern of Rainbow Warrior (right), killing a crew member and sinking the flagship of an environment-focused nongovernmental organization, Greenpeace. The mining of the ship, which had been "preparing to visit Moruroa Atoll for a major campaign against French nuclear testing," later was linked to intelligence agents from France. France eventually paid New Zealand $7 million compensation.
... 1992 (15 years ago today), a federal judge in Miami sentenced Gen. Manuel Antonio Noriega, de facto leader of Panama until deposed by the U.S. military in 1989, to 40 years in prison following conviction on drug-trafficking and money-laundering charges. The sentence was later reduced, and Noriega's possible release this year has begun to stir debate in Panama.

On July 2, ...

... 2006, the 1st 11 judges to serve on the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights were sworn in at an African summit meeting in Banjul, Gambia. They included 2 women, Sophia A.B. Akuffo, formerly a Justice on the Supreme Court of Ghana, and Kellelo Justina Masafo-Guni, formerly a Justice on the High Court of Lesotho.
... 1966, France conducted its 1st atmospheric nuclear weapon test (left), code-named Aldebaran, at its Centre d'Expérimentation du Pacifique near Mururoa in French Polynesia; earlier testing had been conducted in Algeria. According to Atomic Forum:

Apparently the local populations were not notified about the radiological situation.
Documents recently made public state that four days after the test, drinking water was measured to contain six times normal levels of radioactivity on Mangareva. Unwashed lettuce contained 666 times the normal level. Six days after the test, levels in drinking water were 50 times above normal background levels.