Discovery and early claims There are several claims to the first discovery of the island. The earliest recorded possible sighting is 24 January 1521 when Portuguese-born Spanish explorer
Ferdinand Magellan discovered an island he named San Pablo after turning westward away from the American mainland during his circumnavigation of the globe. On 15 November 1528,
Spaniard Álvaro de Saavedra Cerón discovered an island he called Isla Médanos in the region while on an expedition commissioned by his cousin, the Spanish conquistador
Hernán Cortés, to find a route to the
Philippines. Although both San Pablo and Isla Médanos are considered to be possible sightings of Clipperton, the island was first charted by French merchant
Michel Dubocage, commanding
La Découverte, who arrived at the island on
Good Friday, 3 April 1711; he was joined the following day by fellow ship captain and
La Princesse. The island was given the name ('Passion Island') as the date of rediscovery fell within
Passiontide. They drew up the first map of the island and claimed it for France. In August 1825, American sea captain
Benjamin Morrell made the first recorded landing on Clipperton, exploring the island and making a detailed report of its vegetation. The common name for the island comes from
John Clipperton, an English
pirate and
privateer, who fought the Spanish during the early 18th century and is said to have passed by the island. Some sources claim that he used it as a base for his raids on shipping.
19th century Mexican claim 1821–1858 After its
declaration of independence in 1821, Mexico took possession of the lands that had once belonged to Spain. As Spanish records noted the existence of the island as early as 1528, the territory was incorporated into Mexico. The
Mexican constitution of 1917 explicitly includes the island, using the Spanish name , as Mexican territory. This would be amended on January 18, 1934, after the sovereignty dispute over the island was settled in favour of France. were used for mail travelling between Clipperton and San Francisco.|alt=Old postage stamp from Clipperton Island
French claim (1858) In April 1858, French minister
Eugène Rouher reached an agreement with a Mr. Lockhard of Le Havre to claim oceanic islands in the Pacific for the exploitation of guano deposits. Sailing aboard Lockhart's ship
Amiral, Ship-of-the-line Lieutenant Victor Le Coat de Kervéguen published a notice of this annexation in Hawaiian newspapers to further cement France's claim to the island.
Guano mining claims (1892–1905) In 1892, a claim on the island was filed with the U.S. State Department under the U.S.
Guano Islands Act by Frederick W. Permien of San Francisco on behalf of the Stonington Phosphate Company. In 1893, Permien transferred those rights to a new company, the Oceanic Phosphate Company. In response to the application, the State Department rejected the claim, noting France's prior claim on the island and that the claim was not bonded as was required by law. Additionally during this time there were concerns in Mexico that the British or Americans would lay claim to the island. Despite the lack of U.S. approval of its claim, the Oceanic Phosphate Company began mining guano on the island in 1895. Although the company had plans for as many as 200 workers on the island, at its peak only 25 men were stationed there. In 1897, the Oceanic Phosphate Company began negotiations with the British
Pacific Islands Company to transfer its interest in Clipperton; this drew the attention of both French and Mexican officials. On 24 November 1897, French naval authorities arrived on the
Duguay Trouin and found three Americans working on the island. The French ordered the
American flag to be lowered. A few weeks later, on 13 December 1897, Mexico sent the
gunboat La Demócrata and a group of marines to assert its claim on the island, evicting the Americans, raising the Mexican flag, and drawing a protest from France. From 1898 to 1905, the Pacific Islands Company worked the Clipperton guano deposits under a concession agreement with Mexico. In 1898, Mexico made a US$1.5 million claim against the Oceanic Phosphate Company for the guano shipped from the island from 1895 to 1897. He arrived on Clipperton as governor later that year. By 1914 around 100 men, women, and children lived on the island, resupplied every two months by a ship from
Acapulco. With the escalation of fighting in the
Mexican Revolution, regular resupply visits ceased, and the inhabitants were left to their own devices. On 28 February 1914, the schooner
Nokomis wrecked on Clipperton; with a still seaworthy lifeboat, four members of the crew volunteered to row to Acapulco for help. The arrived months later to rescue the crew. While there, the captain offered to transport the survivors of the colony back to Acapulco; Arnaud refused as he believed a supply ship would soon arrive. By 1917, all but one of the male inhabitants had died. Many had perished from
scurvy, while others, including Arnaud, died during an attempt to sail after a passing ship to fetch help. Lighthouse keeper Victoriano Álvarez was the last man on the island, together with 15 women and children. Álvarez proclaimed himself 'king', and began a campaign of rape and murder, before being killed by Tirza Rendón, who was his favourite victim. Almost immediately after Álvarez's death, four women and seven children, the last survivors, were picked up by the U.S. Navy gunship on 18 July 1917.
Final arbitration of ownership (1931) Throughout Mexico's occupation of Clipperton, France insisted on its ownership of the island, and lengthy diplomatic correspondence between the two countries led to a treaty on 2 March 1909, agreeing to seek binding
international arbitration by
Victor Emmanuel III of Italy, with each nation promising to abide by his determination. In 1931, Victor Emmanuel III issued his arbitral decision in the
Clipperton Island Case, declaring Clipperton a French possession. Mexican President
Pascual Ortiz Rubio, in response to public opinion that considered the Italian king biased towards France, consulted international experts on the validity of the decision, but ultimately Mexico accepted Victor Emmanuel's findings. The Mexican press at the time raised the issue of the
Monroe Doctrine with the United States, stating that the French claim had preceded its issuance. France formally took possession of Clipperton on January 26, 1935.
U.S. presidential visit President
Franklin D. Roosevelt made a stop over at Clipperton in July 1938 aboard the as part of a fishing expedition to the
Galápagos Islands and other points along the Central and South American coasts. At the island, Roosevelt and his party spent time fishing for sharks, and afterwards Dr.
Waldo L. Schmitt of the
Smithsonian Institution went ashore with some crew to gather scientific samples and make observations of the island. Roosevelt had previously tried to visit Clipperton in July 1934 after transiting through the Panama Canal en route to Hawaii on the
Houston; he had heard the area was good for fishing, but heavy seas prevented them from lowering a boat when they reached the island. On 19 July 1934, soon after the stop at Clipperton, the rigid airship rendezvoused with the
Houston, and one of the
Macon Curtiss F9C biplanes delivered mail to the president.
American occupation (1944–1945) In April 1944, the took observations of Clipperton while en route to Hawaii. After an overflight of the island by planes from the and to ensure Clipperton was uninhabited, the departed San Francisco on 4 December 1944 with
aerological specialists and personnel, arriving at Clipperton a week later, and was followed several days later by with provisions, heavy equipment, and equipment for construction of a
U.S. Navy weather station on the island. The sailors at the weather station were armed in case of a possible Japanese attack in the region. Landing on the island proved challenging. On 21 December,
LST-563 grounded on the reef and the salvage ship was brought in to help refloat the ship but it too was grounded. Finally, in January 1945, the and were able to free the
Seize and to offload equipment from
LST-563 before it was abandoned. In April 1943, during a meeting between presidents
Roosevelt of the U.S. and
Avila Camacho of Mexico, the topic of Mexican ownership of Clipperton was raised. The American government seemed interested in Clipperton being handed over to Mexico due to the importance the island might play in both commercial and military air travel, as well as its proximity to the
Panama Canal. Although these talks were informal, the U.S. backed away from any Mexican claim on Clipperton as Mexico had previously accepted the 1931 arbitration decision. The U.S. government also felt it would be easier to obtain a military base on the island from France. However, after the French government was notified about the weather station, relations on this matter deteriorated rapidly with the French government sending a formal note of protest in defence of French sovereignty. In response, the U.S. extended an offer for the French military to operate the station or to have the Americans agree to leave the weather station under the same framework previously agreed to with other weather stations in France and North Africa. There were additional concerns within the newly formed
Provisional Government of the French Republic that notification of the installation was made to military and not civilian leadership. French Foreign Minister
Georges Bidault said of the incident: "This is very humiliating to us we are anxious to cooperate with you, but sometimes you do not make it easy". where he visited the installation and that afternoon returned to the United States. As the war in the Pacific progressed, concerns about Japanese incursions into the Eastern Pacific were reduced and in September 1945 the U.S. Navy began removing from Clipperton. During the evacuation, munitions were destroyed, but significant matériel was left on the island. By 21 October 1945, the last U.S. Navy staff at the weather station left Clipperton. The island was visited by ornithologist
Ken Stager of the
Los Angeles County Museum in 1958. By 2003, the booby colonies had grown to 25,000 brown boobies and 112,000 masked boobies, making Clipperton home to the world's second-largest brown booby colony, and its largest masked booby colony. When the
independence of Algeria in 1962 threatened
French nuclear testing sites in North Africa, the
French Ministry of Defence considered Clipperton as a possible replacement site. This was eventually ruled out due to the island's hostile climate and remote location, but the island was used to house a small scientific mission to collect data on nuclear fallout from other nuclear tests. An automatic weather installation was completed on 7 April 1980, with data collected by the station transmitted via the
Argos satellite system to the Lannion Space Meteorology Center in
Brittany France. In 1981, the
Académie des sciences d'outre-mer recommended the island have its own economic infrastructure, with an
airstrip and a fishing port in the lagoon. This would mean opening the lagoon to the ocean by creating a passage in the atoll rim. To oversee this, the French government reassigned Clipperton from the High Commissioner for French Polynesia to the direct authority of the French government, classifying the island as an overseas state private property administered by France's Overseas Minister. In 1986, the Company for the Study, Development and Exploitation of Clipperton Island (French acronym,
SEDEIC) and French officials began outlining a plan for the development of Clipperton as a fishing port, but due to economic constraints, the distance from markets, and the small size of the atoll, nothing beyond preliminary studies was undertaken and plans for the development were abandoned. In the mid-1980s, the French government began efforts to enlist citizens of French Polynesia to settle on Clipperton; these plans were ultimately abandoned as well. In November 1994, the
French Space Agency requested the help of
NASA to track the
first stage breakup of the newly designed
Ariane 5 rocket. After spending a month on Clipperton setting up and calibrating radar equipment to monitor
Ariane flight V88, the mission ended in disappointment when the rocket disintegrated 37 seconds after launch due to a software bug. Despite Mexico accepting the 1931 arbitration decision that Clipperton was French territory, the right of Mexican fishing vessels to work Clipperton's territorial waters have remained a point of contention. A 2007 treaty, reaffirmed in 2017, grants Mexican access to Clipperton's fisheries so long as authorisation is sought from the French government, conservation measures are followed, and catches are reported; however, the lack of regular monitoring of the fisheries by France makes verifying compliance difficult.
Castaways In May 1893, Charles Jensen and "Brick" Thurman of the Oceanic Phosphate Company were left on the island by the company's ship
Compeer with 90 days worth of supplies in order to prevent other attempts to claim the island and its guano. Before sailing for Clipperton, Jensen wrote a letter to the Secretary of the Coast Seamen's Union,
Andrew Furuseth, instructing him that if the Oceanic Phosphate Company had not sent a vessel to Clipperton six weeks after the return of the
Compeer to make it known that they had been stranded there. The Oceanic Phosphate Company denied it had left the men without adequate supplies and contracted the schooner
Viking to retrieve them in late August. The
Viking rescued the men, who had used seabirds' eggs to supplement their supplies, and returned them to San Francisco on 31 October. In May 1897, the British cargo vessel
Kinkora wrecked on Clipperton; the crew was able to salvage food and water from the ship, allowing them to survive on the island in relative comfort. During the crew's time on the island, a passing vessel offered to take the men to the mainland for $1,500, which the crew refused. Instead eight of the men loaded up a lifeboat and rowed to Acapulco for help. After the first mate of the
Kinkora, Mr. McMarty, arrived in Acapulco,
HMS Comus set sail from British Columbia to rescue the sailors. In early 1962, the island provided a home to nine crewmen of the sunken tuna clipper MV
Monarch, stranded for 23 days from 6 February to 1 March. They reported that the lagoon water was drinkable, although they preferred to drink water from the coconuts they found. Unable to use any of the dilapidated buildings, they constructed a crude shelter from cement bags and tin salvaged from
Quonset huts built by the American military 20 years earlier. Wood from the huts was used for firewood, and fish caught off the fringing reef combined with potatoes and onions they had saved from their sinking vessel augmented the island's meager supply of coconuts. The crewmen reported they tried eating bird's eggs, but found them to be rancid, and they decided after trying to cook a 'little black bird' that it did not have enough meat to make the effort worthwhile. Pigs had been eradicated, but the crewmen reported seeing their skeletons around the atoll.
Amateur radio DX-peditions Clipperton has long been an attractive destination for
amateur radio groups due to its remoteness, permit requirements, history, and interesting environment. While some radio operation has been part of other visits to the island, major
DX-peditions have included
FO0XB (1978), FO0XX (1985), FO0CI (1992), FO0AAA (2000), TX5C (2008), In March 2014, the Cordell Expedition, organised and led by
Robert Schmieder, combined a radio DX-pedition using
callsign TX5K with environmental and scientific investigations. The team of 24 radio operators made more than 114,000 contacts, breaking the previous record of 75,000. The activity included extensive operation in the
6-meter band, including
Earth–Moon–Earth communication (EME) or 'moonbounce' contacts. A notable accomplishment was the use of DXA, a real-time satellite-based online graphic radio log web page, allowing anyone with a browser to see the radio activity. Scientific work conducted during the expedition included the first collection and identification of
foraminifera and extensive aerial imaging of the island using kite-borne cameras. The team included two scientists from the
University of Tahiti and a French TV documentary crew from
Thalassa. In April 2015, Alain Duchauchoy, F6BFH, operated from Clipperton using callsign TX5P as part of the Passion 2015 scientific expedition to Clipperton Island. Duchauchoy also researched Mexican use of the island during the early 1900s as part of the expedition. ==See also==