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| currency_code = SHP | drives_on = left | time_zone = GMT | utc_offset = | time_zone_DST = | utc_offset_DST = | calling_code = +247 | cctld = .ac UK Postcode: ASCN 1ZZ | iso3166code = SH-AC }} Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island in the equatorial waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, around from the coast of Africa and from the coast of Brazil, which is roughly midway between the horn of South America and Africa. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha,〔(The St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha Constitution Order 2009, see "EXPLANATORY NOTE" )〕 of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around to the southeast. The territory also includes the "remotest populated archipelago" on Earth, the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, some to the south (about thirty degrees of latitude) and about halfway to the Antarctic Circle. The island is named after the day of its recorded discovery, Ascension Day, and is located at , about as far south of the equator as tropical Venezuela is to its north. It played a role as an important safe haven and coaling station to mariners and for commercial airliners during the days of international air travel by flying boats. During World War II it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic.〔Victory at Sea (Series title), ''Volume-10 "Beneath the Southern Cross"'' 1952 production of NBC, (Disc 2 of DVD collection reproduction ca. 2007-2008)〕 Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922. The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station with a United States Air Force presence, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, an Anglo-American signals intelligence facility and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of five ground antennas (others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, Colorado Springs and Hawaii) that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the United States Air Force operate a telescope on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which are potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory.〔http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/pdfs/ODQNv19i3.pdf〕 ==History== João da Nova, sailing for the Portuguese Crown, discovered the island in 1501 and named it ''Ilha de Nossa Senhora da Conceição'', but the discovery was quickly forgotten. In 1503, the Portuguese navigator Afonso de Albuquerque sighted the island on Ascension Day (which fell on 21 May that year) and named it ''Ilha da Ascensão'' after this feast day.〔 〕 Dry and barren, the island had little appeal for passing ships except for collecting fresh meat, and was not claimed for the Portuguese Crown. Mariners could hunt for the numerous seabirds and the enormous female green turtles that laid their eggs on the sandy beaches. The Portuguese also introduced goats as a potential source of meat for future mariners. In February 1701, HMS ''Roebuck'', commanded by William Dampier, sank in the common anchoring spot in Clarence Bay to the northwest of the island. Some sixty men survived for two months until they were rescued. Almost certainly, after a few days they found the strong water spring in the high interior of the island, in what is now called Breakneck Valley (there is a much smaller water source, lower on the mountain, which was named Dampier's Drip by people who probably misinterpreted Dampier's story).〔see Duff Hart-Davis, ''Ascension, the story of a South Atlantic island''.〕 It is possible that the island was sometimes used〔see Carl Friedrich Behrens, ''Reise durch die Sued-Laender und um die Welt'' (1737), p.250, who wrote that various criminal mariners had been exiled to the island; also in Alex Ritsema ''A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725'' (2010), p.26 and pp.115-117.〕 as an open prison for criminal mariners, although there is only one documented case of such an exile, a Dutch ship's officer, Leendert Hasenbosch, set ashore at Clarence Bay as a punishment for sodomy in May 1725. British mariners found the Dutchman's tent, belongings and diary in January 1726; the man had probably died of thirst or suicide. Organised settlement of Ascension Island began in 1815, when the British garrisoned it as a precaution after imprisoning Napoleon I on Saint Helena to the southeast.〔 On 22 October the ''Cruizer'' class brig-sloops ''Zenobia'' and ''Peruvian'' claimed the island for His Britannic Majesty King George III. The Royal Navy designated the island as a stone frigate, HMS ''Ascension'', with the classification of "Sloop of War of the smaller class". The location of the island made it a useful stopping-point for ships and communications. The Royal Navy used the island as a victualling station for ships, particularly those of the West Africa Squadron working against the slave trade. A garrison of Royal Marines was based at Ascension from 1823. In 1836 the ''Beagle'' voyage visited Ascension. Charles Darwin described it as an arid treeless island, with nothing growing near the coast. Sparse vegetation inland supported "about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows & horses", large numbers of guineafowl imported from the Cape Verde islands, rats, mice, and land crabs; he agreed with the saying attributed to the people of St Helena that "We know we live on a rock, but the poor people at Ascension live on a cinder". He noted the care taken to sustain "houses, gardens & fields placed near the summit of the central mountain", and cisterns at the road side to provide good drinking water. The springs were carefully managed, "so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed the whole island may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order." In commenting on this, he noted René Primevère Lesson's remark "that the English nation alone would have thought of making the island of Ascension a productive spot; any other people would have held it as a mere fortress in the ocean."〔 〕 In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and continuing year on year, ships came each depositing a varied assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in lush profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.〔 (The parable of Green Mountain: Ascension Island, ecosystem construction and ecological fitting ), David M. Wilkinson, Journal of Biogeography, 22 December 2003 〕 In 1899, the Eastern Telegraph Company (now part of Cable & Wireless Worldwide) installed the first underwater cable from the island, connecting the UK with its colonies in South Africa.〔 In 1922, letters patent made Ascension a dependency of Saint Helena.〔 The island was managed by the head of the Eastern Telegraph Company on the island until 1964 when the British Government appointed an Administrator to represent the Governor of Saint Helena on Ascension.〔 During World War II, to supply and augment extensive amphibious aircraft antisubmarine patrol operations ongoing from the early days of the war, the United States built an airbase on Ascension Island, known as "Wideawake",〔 after a nearby colony of sooty terns (locally called 'wideawake' birds because of their loud, distinctive call, which would wake people early in the morning). The airbase, which was under construction by the 38th Combat Engineer Battalion of the Army Corps of Engineers, was unexpectedly visited by two British Fairey Swordfish torpedo planes on 15 June 1942. According to one of the pilots, Peter Jinks, the planes were fired upon before being recognised as allies. The Swordfish had to land on the unfinished airstrip, thus becoming the first aircraft to land on Ascension Island proper — which had long served as an ASW base for Catalina (PBY Catalina) flying boats. The event was later commemorated with a postage stamp 15 June 1982. The airfield was used by the US military as a stopping point for American aircraft crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the way to theatres of operation in Europe and Africa. American bombers based at Wideawake were engaged in the Laconia incident. After the end of World War II, and American departure, the airbase fell into disuse. The only local military action during World War II occurred on 9 December 1941. At around mid-day, the U-boat ''U-124'' approached Georgetown on the surface with the intention of sinking any ships at anchor or shelling the cable station. Fort Bedford, a two-gun shore battery at Cross Hill, above Georgetown, fired on the submarine. The guns scored no hits but the U-boat submerged and retreated. The battery remains largely intact to this day, together with its guns, BL 5.5 inch Mark I naval guns removed from during a refit in Malta in 1938. With the Space Race and the Cold War, the Americans returned in 1956.〔 Wideawake Airfield expanded in the mid-1960s. The runway, with its strange hump, was extended, widened, and improved to allow its use by large aircraft, and later to act as an emergency runway for the Space Shuttle, although the Shuttle never had occasion to use it.〔 The United States Air Force uses the island as part of its Eastern Range. NASA established a tracking station on the island in 1967, which it operated for more than 20 years before closing it down in 1990.〔 A joint Government Communications Headquarters and National Security Agency signals intercept station was also established on Ascension during the Cold War. The island retains a role in space exploration: the European Space Agency now operates an Ariane monitoring facility there.〔 The BBC Atlantic Relay Station was installed in 1966 for short-wave broadcasts to Africa and South America. In 1982 a British task force used Ascension Island as a staging post during the Falklands War,〔 though according to Matthew Parris,〔 〕 "...at the start of the Falklands conflict Washington at first refused Britain permission to use the USA-operated airfield facilities for refuelling RAF jets. Only after Mrs Thatcher intervened with Ronald Reagan did the Americans reluctantly concede." The Royal Air Force deployed a fleet of Vulcan bombers and Victor tankers at the airfield. Vulcans launched the opening shots of the British offensive from Ascension in Operation Black Buck. The RAF also used the base to supply the task force. Because of the increase in air traffic during the war, Wideawake was the busiest airfield in the world for a short period. The Royal Navy's fleet stopped at Ascension for refuelling on the way. Following the war, the British retained an increased presence on the island, establishing RAF Ascension Island, and providing a refuelling stop for the regular airlink between RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, and RAF Mount Pleasant in the Falkland Islands. As of 2004, it was reported that the Composite Signals Organisation, an arm of GCHQ, continued to operate a signals interception facility on Ascension. NASA continued to list Ascension Island as a "downrange site" used for range safety instrumentation.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NASA Range Safety Program – 2007 Annual Report )〕 In particular, the Post-Detect Telemetry System used to acquire launch vehicle telemetry includes a station on Ascension.〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=NASA Range Safety Program – 2007 Annual Report )〕 In 2008 British diplomats requested sovereignty, at the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf (UN CLCS), over of submarine territory around the island. This would enable exploration into new reserves of oil, gas and minerals, though none are thought to exist. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Ascension Island」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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