Hull Island

From TIGHAR
(Redirected from Hull)
Jump to: navigation, search
KI Phoenix islands.PNG

One of the Phoenix Islands. Now known as Orona.

Ric Gillespie, Forum, 1 Nov 1999.
Hull is Orona (named for Harry Maude's wife Honor) and Sydney is Manra (named for I-don't-remember-what) and, of course, Gardner is Nikumaroro (named for the legendary home of Nei Manganibuka).
Around the time of Earhart's disappearance, Hull and Sydney were being worked by Tokelau laborers under contract to Burns Phillip Company and under the supervision of their employed manager John William Jones, who was in residence on Hull (and was interviewed by Lambrecht when he landed in the lagoon). Jones had recently pulled his workers off Sydney, leaving behind the huts that Lambrecht saw and, apparently, the letters in the sand. I like the explanation that they were not some cryptic message but just another example of the islanders' well-known fondness for carving their names in anything in sight.
I don't see how it tells us anything about events on Gardner. Randy Jacobson has said that Jones visited Gardner on the way to Hull but I haven't the paper on that.
Ric Gillespie, Finding Amelia, p. 210.
Jones had the only known radio in, or anywhere near, the islands of the Phoenix Group. Was he able to transmit on 3105 kilocycles? Was he the source of the signals heard by Itasca, Howland, Baker, Tutuila, and Hawaii? Were the bearings taken by Pan American Airways at Mokapu, Midway, and Wake Island, and by Cipriani on Howland, taken on transmissions sent by Jones? Were Mabel Larremore, Dana Randolph, Betty Klenck, and other amateurs victims of an elaborate hoax perpetrated by the overseer on Hull Island? Apparently not. When Jones told Lambrecht that he had heard nothing on his radio receiver, he was telling the truth. The overseer had been without a functioning radio since early June, and a new set was not delivered and installed until the end of August (Captain, HMS Leith, “Report of Proceedings: Island Cruise—Second Part,” September 18, 1937, Public Records Office, Kew, London, Great Britain).