History
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Discovery and early sightings[edit]
Hand-coloured photograph of the southeast coast of Bouvet Island in 1898
The island was discovered on 1 January 1739 by Jean-Baptiste Charles Bouvet de Lozier, commander of the French ships Aigle and Marie. Bouvet, who was searching for a presumed large southern continent, spotted the island through the fog and named the cape he saw Cap de la Circoncision. He was not able to land and did not circumnavigate his discovery, thus not clarifying if it was an island or part of a continent.: 62  His plotting of its position was inaccurate,: 47  leading several expeditions to fail to find the island.: 58  James Cook's second voyage set off from Cape Verde on 22 November 1772 and attempted to find the island, but also failed.
The next expedition to spot the island was in 1808 by James Lindsay, captain of the Samuel Enderby & Sons' (SE&S) snow whaler Swan. Swan and another Enderby whaler, Otter, were in company when they reached the island and recorded its position, though they were unable to land.: 434–435  Lindsay could confirm that the "cape" was indeed an island.: 62  The next expedition to arrive at the island was American Benjamin Morrell and his seal hunting ship Wasp. Morrell, by his own account, found the island without difficulty (with "improbable ease", in the words of historian William Mills): 434–435  before landing and hunting 196 seals.: 62  In his subsequent lengthy description, Morrell does not mention the island's most obvious physical feature: Its permanent ice cover.: 106–107  This has caused some commentators to doubt whether he actually visited the island.: 434–435 
On 10 December 1825, SE&S's George Norris, master of the sealer Sprightly, landed on the island,: 62  named it Liverpool Island and claimed it for the British Crown and George IV on 16 December.: 63  The next expedition to spot the island was Joseph Fuller and his ship Francis Allyn in 1893, but he was not able to land on the island. German Carl Chun's Valdivia Expedition arrived at the island in 1898. They were not able to land, but dredged the seabed for geological samples. They were also the first to accurately fix the island's position.: 63  At least three sealing vessels visited the island between 1822 and 1895. A voyage of exploration in 1927–1928 also took seal pelts.
Norris also spotted a second island in 1825, which he named Thompson Island, which he placed 72 km (45 mi; 39 nmi) north-northeast of Liverpool Island. Thompson Island was also reported in 1893 by Fuller, but in 1898 Chun did not report seeing such an island, nor has anyone since. However, Thompson Island continued to appear on maps as late as 1943. A 1967 paper suggested that the island might have disappeared in an undetected volcanic eruption, but in 1997 it was discovered that the ocean is more than 2,400 m (7,900 ft) deep in the area.
Norwegian annexation[edit]
The claiming of the island on 1 December 1927
The first hut, built on Cape Circoncision, in 1929
In 1927, the First Norvegia Expedition, led by Harald Horntvedt and financed by the shipowner and philanthropist Lars Christensen, was the first to make an extended stay on the island. Observations and surveying were conducted on the island and oceanographic measurements performed in the sea around it. At Ny Sandefjord, a small hut was erected and, on 1 December, the Norwegian flag was hoisted and the island claimed for Norway. The annexation was established by a royal decree on 23 January 1928.: 63 
The claim was initially opposed by the United Kingdom, on the basis of Norris's landing and annexation. The British position was weakened by Norris's sighting of two islands and the uncertainty as to whether he had been on Thompson or Liverpool (i.e. Bouvet) Island. Norris's positioning deviating from the correct location combined with the island's small size and lack of a natural harbour made the United Kingdom accept the Norwegian claim.: 52  This resulted in diplomatic negotiations between the two countries, and in November 1929, Britain renounced its claim to the island.: 63 
The Second Norvegia Expedition arrived in 1928 with the intent of establishing a staffed meteorological radio station, but a suitable location could not be found.: 63  By then both the flagpole and hut from the previous year had been washed away. The Third Norvegia Expedition, led by Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen, arrived the following year and built a new hut at Cape Circoncision and on Larsøya. The expedition carried out aerial photography of the island and was the first Antarctic expedition to use aircraft.: 64  The Dependency Act, passed by the Parliament of Norway on 27 February 1930, established Bouvet Island as a Norwegian dependency, along with Peter I Island and Queen Maud Land. The eared seal was protected on and around the island in 1929, and in 1935 all seals around the island were protected.
Recent history[edit]
In 1955, the South African frigate SAS Transvaal visited the island. Nyrøysa, a rock-strewn ice-free area, the largest such on Bouvet, was created sometime between 1955 and 1958, probably by a landslide.
In 1964, the island was visited by the British naval ship HMS Protector. One of Protector's two Westland Whirlwind helicopters landed a small survey team led by Lieutenant Commander Alan Crawford on the island at Nyrøysa for a brief visit. Shortly after landing, the survey team discovered an abandoned lifeboat in a small lagoon. With very little time, a brief search was made but no other signs of human activity were found, and the identity of the lifeboat remained a mystery for many years.: 177–185 
On 17 December 1971, the entire island and its territorial waters were protected as a nature reserve. A scientific landing was made in 1978, during which the underground temperature was measured to be 25 °C (77 °F). In addition to scientific surveys, the lifeboat found by the Protector team was recovered from Nyrøysa, although no other signs of people were found. The lifeboat was believed to belong to a Soviet scientific reconnaissance vessel.
The Vela incident took place on 22 September 1979, on or above the sea between Bouvet Island and the Prince Edward Islands, when the American Vela Hotel satellite 6911 registered an unexplained double flash. This observation has been variously interpreted as a meteor, or an instrumentation glitch, but most independent assessments conclude it was an undeclared joint nuclear test carried out by South Africa and Israel.
In the mid-1980s, Bouvet Island, Jan Mayen, and Svalbard were considered as locations for the new Norwegian International Ship Register, but the flag of convenience registry was ultimately established in Bergen, Norway, in 1987.: 189  In 2007, the island was added to Norway's tentative list of nominations as a World Heritage Site as part of the transnational nomination of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.
Krill fishing in the Southern Ocean is subject to the Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources, which defines maximum catch quotas for a sustainable exploitation of Antarctic krill. Surveys conducted in 2000 showed high concentration of krill around Bouvet Island. In 2004, Aker BioMarine was awarded a concession to fish krill, and additional quotas were awarded from 2008 for a total catch of 620,000 t (610,000 long tons; 680,000 short tons). There is a controversy as to whether the fisheries are sustainable, particularly in relation to krill being important food for whales. In 2009, Norway filed with the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf to extend the outer limit of the continental shelf past 200 nmi (230 mi; 370 km) surrounding the island.
The expedition ship Hanse Explorer visited Bouvet Island on 20 and 21 February 2012 as part of "Expédition pour le Futur". The expedition's goal was to land and climb the highest point on the island.
Bouvet Island is assigned the amateur radio callsign prefix 3Y0, and several amateur radio DX-peditions have been conducted to the island. The 3Y0J DX-pedition to Bouvet Island took place between January and February 2023, but had to be reduced in scope and eventually cut short due to bad and worsening weather conditions. The 3Y0K expedition to Bouvet commenced in March 2026.
