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| Satellite image of Bouvet Island. |
Only the most adventurous travelers visit Bouvet Island and only a very unfortunate soul would wind up there in a lifeboat, unless it was a landing craft. Most modern expeditions onto the island are made by helicopter because landing a boat on Bouvet Island is difficult under the best conditions and impossible under average conditions. It is 90% covered in glaciers, under which is an active volcano. The sides of the island are almost all sheer, icy cliffs. Let's put it this way, if you find yourself lost and stuck on Bouvet Island, you will probably be spending the rest of your now short life there with no food and maybe water, if you have something with which to melt ice.
Because of its location, weather researchers have long thought it a great place to put a weather tower. In 1964, Lieutenant Commander Allan Crawford was sent to the island to investigate a new area of the land, created by lava flow ten years prior to the expedition. He and his team landed via helicopter and began checking out the landscape. There, Crawford saw a lagoon with a very strange feature -- an abandoned lifeboat.
Crawford later reported that the abandoned lifeboat on Bouvet Island had no markings on it that would suggest its origins. It also had no motor and no sails. He found the oars on shore, along with a flattened copper tank and a barrel. He was unable to do a thorough search of the area, given the harsh nature of the terrain and the work he had come to do, but what he was able to search of the landscape turned up nothing else. There was no evidence that people had stayed on the island or died on the island. There was nothing.
Two years after Crawford's Bouvet Island expedition, another expedition did a survey of the area around the lagoon. They described the lagoon, but made no mention of a lifeboat, so it must have disappeared by then, but where could it have gone? It is unlikely that another expedition would have retrieved it, as dragging an extra boat back into the water or bringing a lifeboat onto a helicopter are far-fetched scenarios. There is the possibility that it sank into the lagoon. However, without knowing how deep the lagoon is, it is hard to say. All we do know is that Crawford's lifeboat is gone.
As for the origins of the lifeboat on Bouvet Island, no one has come forward to say it was theirs. It could have been left by an expedition, but the lagoon was no more than ten years old, so there is only a small space of time during which the lifeboat could have appeared. Research into who visited Bouvet Island during that ten-year span has turned up nothing about an abandoned boat.
It seems unlikely that the lifeboat came from a shipwreck, as Bouvet Island is a small speck in a vast land-free ocean. Visibility is extremely poor, as well. Then, there is also the question of why the boat was left there at all. Did a shipwreck victim or the victim of a failed expedition die there? If so, why did he not use his boat for shelter? Why did he not camp near the lagoon? Did he camp, but have the traces of his stay been wiped out by the weather? There are just too many unanswerable questions regarding the mysterious lifeboat of Bouvet Island. It seems we will never know if it signified a disaster or if it was simply unable to return to a bigger ship during a successful expedition.
Sources
Dash, Mike, An Abandoned Lifeboat at World's End, retrieved 8/25/11, allkindsofhistory.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/an-abandoned-lifeboat-at-worlds-end
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