Kanton Island

Canton Island (also known as Kanton or Abariringa), previously known as Mary Island, Mary Balcout's Island or Swallow Island, is the largest, northernmost, and as of 2020, the sole inhabited island of the Phoenix Islands, in the Republic of Kiribati. It is an atoll located in the South Pacific Ocean roughly halfway between Hawaii and Fiji, a location that once made it advantageous as an airline stop. The island is a narrow ribbon of land around a lagoon; an area of 40 km2 (15 sq mi). Canton's closest neighbour is the uninhabited Enderbury Island, 63 km (39 mi) west-southwest. The capital of Kiribati, South Tarawa, lies 1,765 km (1,097 mi) to the west. As of 2020, the population was 41, down from 61 in 2000. The island's sole village, Tebaronga, is located on the northwest point, below the airstrip. Kiribati declared the Phoenix Islands Protected Area in 2006, with the park being expanded in 2008. The 425,300 km2 (164,200 sq mi) marine reserve contains eight coral atolls, including Canton. Because it is inhabited, management of Canton Island is described in the Canton Resource Use Sustainability Plan (KRUSP), which covers a 12 nmi (22 km; 14 mi) radius around the atoll. Over 50% of the island and lagoon are protected in a conservation zone.

On 5 August 1824, the whaler Phœnix of London (master John Palmer) in the company of whaler Mary of London, came to a low and barren island with a spacious lagoon, in latitude 2° 48 S and longitude 172° 10 W, and it was named "Mary Ballcotts Island". H.E. Maude and Niel Gunson both assumed this to be the whaler Mary, owned by John Lydekker (1778–1832), and that her captain Edward Reed Lacy had reported the island. The entry for 5 August 1824 of that Mary's logbook, however, mentions no discovery, nor a ship Phœnix. The ship Mary truly there that day (her master presumably Abijah Lock) was another whaler from London, owned by Hill, Boulcott & Hill, a firm consisting of the two brothers James & Amon Hill and their brother-in-law John Ellerker Boulcott. The latter was married to a Mary Boulcott, née Hill, and it was she for whom this island was named. Ever since it was incorrectly penned down as "Mary Ballcotts Island" in Will

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