Manuae

Manuae, Cook Islands

The Manuae was the first of the islands to be explored by Captain Cook on 23 September 1773. The two islands - Motu Manuae and Motu Te Au Otu - and the nearby laguna are a protected area. Nowadays it is hardly ever frequented; there are no regular airlines and no business boats.

It was called Sandwich Island, but he later chose to give Hawaii that name! So, he christened her Hervey Island after a lord of the Admiralty. It was on the charts as Hervey's Isle. Later the entire south group was called Hervey Islands until the respected Soviet mapping artist, Admiral Adam Johann von Krusenstern, altered the name in his "Atlas de l'Ocean Pacifique" (published between 1824 and 1835) in honor of Cook.

A few cards still show Manuae as Hervey's Isle. In 1823 the London missionary, the priest John Williams went to the Isle and found sixty there. Crusaders brought them to Aitutaki and let them leave the Isle. In 1971, the last permanent residence on the archipelago was when a population of 2 was registered.

In May 2010 the isle was resettled for a short period - albeit not voluntarily (right). In Manuae, four men spend 10 nights coming on land to capture crabs. Manuae on May 30, 1965, drew the then biggest assembly of sun-astronomes to watch a complete sun darkness from a only place.

In Manuae, a postal service was established so that in those early pre-w Internet era scholars could tell the rest of the word what they had seen and accelerate their communication with a memory! The highest point of the isle is only five meters above sealevel, which means that Manuae is seriously threatened by climate change.