Hall Island (Arctic)

Hall Island was discovered on 30 August 1873, by the Austro-Hungarian North Pole expedition, and named after American Arctic explorer Charles Francis Hall. It was the first major island of the Franz Josef group on which the expedition members set foot.

A small camp was built at Cape Tegethoff in 1898 by the Walter Wellman expedition. It contains a marker commemorating the discovery of the archipelago. Cape Tegethoff was named after the main ship of the Austro-Hungarian explorers, which had been named in honor of Austrian admiral Wilhelm von Tegetthoff.[1][2]

Cape Tegetthoff

Hall Island is almost completely covered by glaciers. Its highest point is 502 m (1,647 ft) and it is the summit of the Kupol Moskvy ice dome that covers the central part of the island. Besides the ice dome there is a glacier with its terminus in the southern shore, the Sonklar Glacier.[3]

The only relatively large areas free of permanent ice are located in its southern end, where there are two headlands, Cape Tegethoff, and also Cape Ozernyy, on Littrov Peninsula. There is also a very small unglacierized area around its eastern cape, Mys Frankfurt, and another in its northwestern point, Cape Wiggins. Hall Island's area is 1,049 km² (405 sq mi) and it is one of the largest islands in the group. There is a wide bay on the southeastern side of Hall Island known as Hydrographer Bay and a smaller one west of the Littrov Peninsula called Bukhta Surovaya.

Hall Island is located very close to the eastern shores of McClintock Island, separated from it by a narrow sound. To the southeast there is a wider strait separating Hall Island from Salm Island known in Russian as Proliv Lavrova. The strait to the east is the large Avstriskiy Proliv.

• List of islands of Russia