Island Somerset (Canada)

The island Somerset () is a large island of the Canadian Arctic Archipel in the north of the Péninsule Boothia of which it is separate only by the Détroit of Bellot, broad 2 km. Located in the Nunavut (area of Qikiqtaaluk]), it has a surface of 24 786 km ², by making the 45e larger island in the world and the twelfth in Canada. The island is uninhabited.

History

In the neighborhoods of the Year millet, the northern coast of the Somerset island was inhabited by the people Thulé, as the bones to whale, stone tunnels and ruins testify some. At the end of 1848, James Clark Ross, ordering two ships approached in Port Leopold on the northern coast to winter. In April, it launched an exploration of the island in sledge.

In 1937 the station of trade Fort Ross () was created by the Compagnie of Hudson Bay in the south-east of the island. Hardly eleven years later, it was closed, the climatic conditions and the difficulties of access making its exploitation nonprofitable. That left the uninhabited island. The old store and the house of the manager are always used like shelter by the Inuit S of Taloyoak, hunters of caribou S.

The historic sites, fauna and the easy access since Resolute (Nunavut), made north-eastern coast a tourist destination.

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