The island was named by the second
German North Polar Expedition 1869–70 as
Clavering Insel (German for island) to commemorate
Douglas Charles Clavering (1794–1827), commander of the
Griper on the 1823 voyage, which explored the area and, at the southern shore of this island made the first (and last) encounter that Europeans made with the now extinct
Northeast-Greenland Inuit. In late August 1823, Clavering and the crew of the
Griper encountered a band of twelve Inuit, including men, women and children. In his journal, Clavering described their seal-skin tent, canoe, and clothes, their harpoons and spear tipped with bone and
meteoric iron, and their physical appearance ("tawny coppery" skin, "black hair and round visages; their hands and feet very fleshy, and much swelled"). He remarked on their skill in skinning a seal, the custom of sprinkling water over a seal or walrus before skinning, and their amazement at the demonstration of firearms for hunting. European visitors to Northeast Greenland prior to 1823 reported evidence of extensive Inuit settlement in the region although they encountered no humans. Later expeditions, starting with the Second
German North Polar Expedition in 1869, found the remains of many former settlements, but the population had apparently died out during the intervening years. Bones of
muskoxen have been found at Inuit sites on the island, but no such animals were reported by Clavering in 1823. Large numbers of
Arctic hare bones suggest that the Inuit were reduced to hunting smaller game after the extinction of muskoxen in the area. After humans died out, muskoxen returned, and the first pair of live muskoxen ever to be brought to
Europe were captured at Clavering Island in 1899.
Eskimonæs The Eskimonæs radio and
telegraph station stood on a small peninsula in the south coast of Clavering Island. The place had been named
Eskimonæsset by the
1929-30 Expedition to East Greenland led by
Lauge Koch, after the abandoned Inuit settlement of four houses, of which two were excavated at the time. The station was built as a scientific post and was also used later as a base by the
Three-year Expedition to East Greenland, as well as by other scientists from 1931 to 1939. From 1941 to 1943, it became the headquarters of the Danish
North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol. During the war, the code name used for the Eskimonæs Station by the
US Coast Guard was '
Bluie East Five' — the same code name would be later used for
Myggbukta after Eskimonæs was destroyed. The main building at Eskimonæs was burnt by a German military patrol on 25 March 1943, and the site was bombed by the
US Air Force on 14 May the same year. The burnt out station would be replaced by
Dødemandsbugten Station, also known as Ny Station, which was built nearby further to the east later in the same year. Dødemandsbugten would be succeeded in 1944 by
Daneborg and the ruins of the two former stations lay now abandoned and remain essentially undisturbed as a conspicuous memorial to war-time events. The efforts of the North-East Greenland Sledge Patrol led by Ib Poulson in World War II were chronicled after the war by English author
David Armine Howarth in his 1951 book
The Sledge Patrol. ==Geography==