Unwanted Atolls

NZ Warship Finds a Lot of Coconut Palms

IF there is truth in a report published in “New Zealand Herald” on July 26, there is something worthwhile wait ing to be picked up by any industrious voyager in the equatorial region north wards of Tahiti. There is there an un inhabited island, called Flint, an atoll three miles long by a half-mile wide, on which are growing thousands of coco nuts —the untended remains of a planta tion of 30,000 palms, maintained for years by S. R. Maxwell and Co. Ltd., of Tahiti, but apparently abandoned before World War II.

As there are no people there now, and as copra has been worth £100 per ton and more since 1945, it looks as if no one now wants Flint Island.

There are 11 atolls, called the Line Islands, scattered about in that lonely area between Hawaii and French Oceania.

Generally uninhabited, and apparently of no economic value. No one wanted them until, in the thirties, there was a scramble for Pacific air bases. Britain then hurriedly confirmed her title to Washington, Fanning, Christmas, Malden, Starbuck, Caroline, Vostock and Flint; while United States got Kingman, Pal myra and Jarvis.

Last month, the New Zealand sloop frigate, “Kaniere,” visited Flint atoll, and a painted notice, again affirming British sovereignty, was planted on the beach.

The ship reported that the island is now heavily wooded, with palms predominat ing.