Bouvet Island is located in the Atlantic Ocean not far from Antarctica, so it is not surprising that this small piece of land, lost in cold waters, has neither a climate favorable for humans, nor a wealth of flora and fauna.
This is a mostly glacier-covered volcanic formation with an area of 58 square kilometers, where no one has ever lived or still lives.
The island is named after the French explorer-traveler Bouvet de Lozier, who discovered this land area in 1739. However, for the first time a human foot set foot on Bouvet only in 1927.
These were the Norwegians from the ship Norvegia, and it was they who "attributed" the island to their country (such an affiliation remains to this day). Bouvet turned out to be so unfriendly to guests that later rarely anyone dared to sail here, and today you can only get to the island by helicopter. However, there are brave sea travelers who risk visiting this deserted and very harsh corner of the planet, but, as a rule, they cannot even land on Bouvet. It is no coincidence that there is a joke among them (in which there is a considerable grain of truth): in order to consider yourself visiting the island, it is enough to sail around it on a ship. Indeed, lowering the lifeboat and sailing to these bleak shores is a life-threatening undertaking.
The first mystery of Bouvet Island
Promotional video:
But here's what surprises researchers of the paranormal: in 1964, the British ship HMS Protector approached Bouvet, and its crew, having disembarked, was surprised to find an abandoned rowboat in one of the lagoons, already half-flooded. The lifeboat contained a lot of all kinds of supplies, including alcohol, as well as various things and clothes. Part of this "wealth" lay on the shore, as if the boat's crew began to unload it, and then, for some unknown reason, gave up this occupation. However, people not only stopped unloading, but also disappeared without a trace, without setting up a camp or even lighting a fire, which is very strange for navigators who arrived in the cold on the ice island.
As journalists often write about this case, people appeared on the shore as if out of nowhere and disappeared into nowhere, abandoning their boat. Indeed, to the nearest settlement from here is almost 2 thousand kilometers along the waves of Antarctica, it is simply unthinkable to swim such a distance on oars. It looks like the boat arrived at the island from a sunken ship, but since 1955 no ship has passed near these places, and no information about the wrecks has been reported either.
By the way, the next time the British sailed to Bouvet two years later, that is, in 1966, and, to their great surprise, did not find any boats or unloaded items in the same place. But after a couple of years on a deserted island, all this could not disappear, as they say, to the last thread and the last splinter. However, this is exactly what happened …
The second mystery of Bouvet Island
There is another mystery connected with Bouvet Island, which, like the first, no one can solve until now. In 1979, the American satellite Vela-6911, designed to monitor possible tests of atomic weapons (this was relevant during the Cold War between the United States and the USSR), recorded in this area outbreaks characteristic of nuclear explosions. However, no country in the world claimed responsibility for this incident, which is still listed as an unsolved Vela incident.
A little later, employees of the world intelligence community examined Bouvet and the surrounding water area, but they did not find any traces of a nuclear explosion (neither radiation, nor the corresponding data from seismographs and hydroacoustic installations).
An automatic weather station installed here in 2008 is currently operating on Bouvet. You can still get here by helicopter and - in the rarest cases - by boat from the ship. Once a year, the cruise ship "Aleksey Maryshev" passes by the mysterious island, making a two-day stop near Bouvet. In this case, there is no talk of any landing on the shore.
As for some brave sailors, they can go here on their own initiative, having received a Norwegian visa to visit the mysterious island. Some do just that, however, almost no one succeeds in landing on the inhospitable coast, as we have already said …