Talk:Île Amsterdam

Antipodes
I mistakenly edited the Antipodes statement, since the geographic coordinates of Kerguelen Island seem to show that its antipode is in Canada. However, the northenmost peninsulas of Kerguelen are antipodes to an area just over the US border in Montana, so I reverted the edit. Stereoroid 23:50, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

How the heck came the cattle there? By swimming? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

There is an error in either this article OR the related one about St. Paul Island. BOTH articles say the British frigate, HMS Megaera, was wrecked on the island in 1871. It couldn't have been wrecked on both islands--they are miles apart. So, which is it? (I collect the stamps of the FSAT-TAAF: that's why I read the article. The very beautiful stamps of the TAAF are popular collectibles for philatelists.) Greg 24.21.45.18 (talk) 06:48, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one article was rated and this bot brought all the other ratings up to at least that level. BetacommandBot 08:30, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

Elcano's discovery?
Pigafetta (the only account of Magellan and Elcano's navigation) does not mention this island at all. From Timor he jumps directly to Cape of Good Hope. --Sugaar (talk) 23:09, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Map scale
It seems, that the scale on the map is not correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.140.253.8 (talk) 13:23, 23 June 2008 (UTC)

Comparing with Google Maps, it seems that the scale bar should be labeled miles, not km. Then the two match. Also I don't see how the longest side of the island could be 21 km, as stated, when the circumference (measured from the map presuming miles in the scale bar) is about 30 km. Olli Niemitalo (talk) 07:03, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Population?
The article doesn't tell about the number of unhabitants of this island.Perhaps, just about one hundred.Even so, the article has this big defect:it has nothing about the number of unhabitants.Agre22 (talk) 14:58, 29 August 2008 (UTC)agre22

The intro part says 30 non-permanent residents, but that would seem to be at odds with what can be plainly seen by satellite views -- there are at least 30 buildings, some of them in the range of 2000-3000 sq.ft. 69.158.124.43 (talk) 15:04, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Please present a reliable source on this issue. 霎起林野间 (talk) 02:47, 20 May 2014 (UTC)

Supposed marooning of François Péron
An unsourced edit made on September 1 2007 by Mohonu made reference to the marooning of François Péron on this island for three years, between 1792 and 1795, which contradicts his biographical page. It remained unchanged until today; I have removed the paragraph.

I did a little bit of research and found this: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Amsterdam_(Island)

Can anyone verify this source? Either the François Péron article is incorrect and he actually was marooned for three years (which is very unlikely... what are the chances of ONE person alone surviving a wreck which must have had many other people on board?), or I smell somebody playing silly buggers with one or some of these articles. jamie (talk) 16:24, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Further from this, I have learned that the pertinent biographical information on the François Péron page was written by Edward Duyker, who co-incidentally enough is a school chum of mine's father I have met many times and who is an absolutely trustworthy historian. This would lend me to further conclude that all of Mohonu's article edits may be suspect. jamie (talk) 16:35, 17 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Never mind, further research has just shown this to be a case of simple mistaken identity. Pierre François Péron and not François Péron was the man marooned on the island. Apologies to Mohonu for the accusation. I have updated the article to the old version with this correction and added three references, including the e-book of his memoirs itself (though it is written in French of course).jamie (talk) 17:14, 17 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: closed, not moved billinghurst  sDrewth  03:59, 8 July 2010 (UTC) billinghurst  sDrewth  03:59, 8 July 2010 (UTC)

Île Amsterdam → — I'm not sure if this should be moved or not. From what I can find, the use of "Île Amsterdam" and "Amsterdam Island" seem to be roughly equal in English. An application of WP:ENGLISH suggests that perhaps "Amsterdam Island" is more appropriate. On English-language web pages, "Amsterdam Island" gets 153K ghits to "Île Amsterdam"'s 136K, but if all language pages are included, "Île Amsterdam" bumps up to 178K. To complicate matters, Britannica and Encarta use the official French name, "Nouvelle Amsterdam", but this name gets considerably fewer google hits than the other two (24K in any language, only 3K in English pages). Thoughts? Good Ol’factory (talk) 04:29, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep as is, this avoids confusion with the Svalbard island, and any pseudo-historical misnamings on Manhattan. 76.66.195.196 (talk) 06:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)


 * Oppose - the current title is the most-commonly used unambiguous name. Knepflerle (talk) 11:15, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Oppose Proposed naming will only cause more confusion.  The present title is widely used in English.  WP:ENGLISH does not mean that everything has to be translated into English when the foreign language term is widely used in English.  Skinsmoke (talk) 12:57, 30 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment (nom). I'm willing to withdraw this, in light of the comments so far. Mainly I just wanted to get some views on this issue. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:13, 4 July 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

An interesting question that may or may not relate to the article
It says that the settlement attempt made by Heurtin in 1871 failed as their plan of raising animals was not fruitful. However, after they abandoned their livestocks on the island, the cattle population increased to 2,000 by the later half of 20th century - really fruitful isn't it? Is it somehow contraditing itself here. 霎起林野间 (talk) 02:47, 20 May 2014 (UTC)