Saunders Island (; ) is in Baffin Bay, and off North Star Bay, in the Avannaata municipality of northwest Greenland.GoogleEarth The island is named after Commander James Saunders of the British Royal Navy.
Geography The island lies off the southern shore of the mouth of Wolstenholme Fjord, north of Wolstenholme Island. Geologically it is composed of stratified rock. It is the largest island at the mouth of the fjord, flat-topped and with steep sides, with a landspit in the northeast.Markham, Clements R. (1909). Life of Admiral Sir Leopold McClintock. p. 90. Its highest point is .1:1,000,000 scale Operational Navigation Chart, Sheet B-8, 3rd edition The strait between the islands and the mainland is Bylot Sound.
History Under Commander James Saunders, sailed to the Arctic in 1849 in the spring on a venture to search and resupply Captain Sir James Clark Ross' expedition, who in turn had sailed in 1848 trying to locate the whereabouts of Sir John Franklin's expedition.Icy Imprisonment: The 1849 Voyage of the HMS North Star
Failing to find Franklin or Ross, Saunders's mission aboard North Star consisted in depositing stores along several named areas of the Canadian Arctic coast and returning to England before the onset of winter. However, James Saunders's ship became trapped by ice off the coast of northwest Greenland in North Star Bay. During the winter 1849–50 Saunders named numerous landmarks in that area, including Saunders Island, while wintering in the frozen bay.The Nautical Magazine and Naval Chronicle, Simpkin, Marshall & Co. London 1850, p. 588
The Literary Expedition led by Ludvig Mylius-Erichsen wintered in 1903–1904 on the island. Its aim was to make ethnographic research of the local Inuit. Knud Rasmussen, Harald Moltke and Jørgen Brønlund were also part of this venture.Den Litterære Ekspedition. In Den Store Danske Encyklopædi
Biodiversity The island has been designated an Important Bird Area (IBA) by BirdLife International because it supports a breeding population of some 143,000 pairs of thick-billed murres, as well as other seabirds, including northern fulmars and black guillemots.
See also List of islands of Greenland 70th meridian west
References
External links
NASA - IceBridge Survey Flight Over Saunders Island and Wolstenholme Fjord