Olson and Ramon • WAKE ISLAND RAIL 
667 
Wake Island, the atoll is composed of three 
islands. The largest is the V-shaped main island of 
Wake (553.2 ha), the northern arm of which 
continues as Peale Island (103.9 ha. separated by a 
channel 140 m in width), and the southern arm as 
Wilkes Island (79.9 ha. channel 100-140 m in 
width depending on angle). These two islands 
(Fig. 2, inset) were named for the naturalist and 
for the commander of the U.S. Exploring 
Expedition by Alexander Wet more on the 1923 
Tanager Expedition (Olson 1996). The total land 
area of Wake Atoll is 7.4 knr (Bryan 1959). The 
"highest elevation is barely 21 feet |6.4 m) above 
sea level" (Cohen 1983:1). The windward side of 
the island is north, but the southern half is 
periodically inundated by typhoons. 
The climate, soils, and vegetation of Wake 
were described by Fosberg (1959). The island is 
rather dry ( — 1,000 mm rain per annum) but 
subject to extreme droughts. The soil is mainly 
coralline rubble with some organic humus and the 
natural vegetation was low, scrubby forest 
dominated by Heliotropium foertherianum (for¬ 
merly Toumeforiiu argentea). Bryan (1926: 4-5) 
considered both the fauna (especially insects) and 
flora of Wake Island to be “markedly different” 
from that of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands 
and Johnston Island, and closely similar to that of 
coral atolls across the South Pacific. 
The presence of the Pacific (or Polynesian) rat 
(Paints exulans) on Wake indicates the island was 
almost certainly visited by far-ranging Polynesian 
voyagers: probably well before the 16th century. 
Ferdon (1987:218) argued cogently that Pacific- 
rats were deliberately and knowingly taken by 
Polynesians on long sea voyages “as a marginal 
source of food that could fend for itself.” 
It is thought the island encountered and named 
San Francisco in October 1568 by the Spanish 
explorer Alvaro de Mendafia de Neyra (or Neira) 
may have been the same as Wake. Beaglehole 
(1947:64) reported that Mendana “sighted a 
small island destitute of water and bare of every 
living thing except sea-birds and a few stunted 
shrubs....and passed on in bitter disappoint¬ 
ment.” Yet Werstcin (1964:12) quoted Mendana 
to the effect that “the land swarms with a strange 
type of rat that runs about on its hind legs.... and 
there are many birds of all sorts”—a passage that 
has been repeated by subsequent authors citing 
Werstein. whose quote has an aura of credibility 
because on Wake Island there were both Pacific 
rats and a flightless rail that was more or less the 
size and coloration of a rat and that “runs about 
on its hind legs.” But we found no original 
source for any attribution of rats to Wake by 
Mendana, including in the contemporary journals 
of the voyage (Amherst and Thomson 1901 :lii, 
69. 186, 209, 441-442). Perhaps Werstein took 
the rat quote from some source pertaining to 
another island or simply invented it. 
Official discovery of the island has been 
credited to Captain William Wake in the British 
schooner Prince William Henry in 1796. Only 
occasional vessels sighted or visited the island 
from then until the beginning of the 20th century, 
including at least one major shipwreck in 1866 
(Bryan 1942, 1959: Spennemann 2005). The only 
visit of a scientific nature prior to 1923 was of the 
U.S, Exploring Expedition in December 1841, 
whose naturalists reported the presence of sea¬ 
birds and noted that rats were “common” but 
who not only overlooked the rail (Peale 1848, 
Pocsch 1961:199) but also failed to mention the 
land hermit crabs (Coenobita perlata ) that Ed¬ 
mondson (1925) described as very abundant. 
Wake Island was formally annexed by the United 
States on 17 January 1899 by a naval vessel sent 
from Honolulu expressly for the purpose (Bryan 
1959). 
A Japanese vessel visited Wake in 1892 as 
known only from specimens of the flightless rail 
that were obtained for Alan Owston who sold 
them to Rothschild, who named the species 
Hypoiaenidki wakens is (Rothschild 1903). The 
purpose of that visit may have been to obtain 
feathers of seabirds for millinery purposes, 
possibly leading to the first voluntary human 
settlers of Wake Island who were among the 
Japanese feather poachers who ranged over the 
North Pacific in the early decades of the 20"' 
century slaughtering seabirds. Two camps of 
feather poachers on Wake Island, apparently 
abandoned in 1908. were discovered and docu¬ 
mented by members of the Tanager Expedition, 
who made an extensive biological survey of the 
island from 27 July to 5 August 1923 (Bryan 
1959. Olson 1996). Alexander Wetniore, as the 
ornithologist on the Expedition, was the first to 
make any observations of the Wake Island Rail in 
life. He and the expedition planners, including 
Wetmore\s chief, E. W. Nelson of the U.S. 
Biological Survey, had evidently over looked 
Rothschild s (1903) brief description of Hvpotae- 
nidia wakensis and were not aware that a 
flightless rail should be expected on Wake Island. 
