Port-Christmas

Port-Christmas is a natural and historical site on the Kerguelen Islands, located at the northern tip of the main island, on the east coast of the Loranchet Peninsula. It covers the bottom of Baie de l'Oiseau, the first shelter for sailors approaching the archipelago from the north, and is easily identifiable by the presence at the entrance of a natural arch, now collapsed, known as the Kerguelen Arch.
It was here, in 1774, that the explorer Yves Joseph de Kerguelen de Trémarec took possession of the island on behalf of King Louis XV of France. However, the name of the island, Christmas Harbour, was given by James Cook, whose ships anchored in the bay on Christmas Day back in 1776, during his third circumnavigation. The name appears in some French translations or fictional works such as le Havre de Noël or Port-Noël.
Considered to be a safe haven, in the 19th century it regularly welcomed the ships of seal and whale hunters, mainly from Nantucket, who scoured the southern seas and islands. The site is also occasionally used as a research station for geomagnetism investigations.
Descriptions of these landscapes by explorers in their travelogues inspired great writers, starting with Edgar Allan Poe (1838), followed by Jules Verne (1897), who incorporated them into their adventure novels, then Valery Larbaud (1933) and Jean-Paul Kaufmann (1993), among others, in their more personal works.