Ile d'Ouessant
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Ile d'Ouessant (in English Ushant, in Breton Enez Eusa) is an island in the English Channel which marks the north-westernmost point of European France.

Ouessant is the southern entrance to the western English Channel, the northern entrance being Land's End in England. Although an island in the Channel, Ouessant is not part of the Channel Islands.

The island comprises a rocky landmass of some 8 km by 3 km (15 square km in total), with only one significant community, the village of Lampaul. Ouessant has a total population of about 800 people.

Ouessant is famous for its maritime past, both as a fishing community and as a key landmark in the Channel approaches. It is named in the refrain of the sea shanty Spanish Ladies:

We'll rant and we'll roar like true British sailors,

We'll rant and we'll roar across the salt seas,

Until we strike soundings in the channel of old England,

From Ushant to Scilly is thirty-five leagues.

In July 1778, the British and French fleets fought a large but inconclusive battle off the island. 200 years later, in March 1978, the US oil tanker Amoco Cadiz ran aground about 10 km from the island, causing major pollution of the Brittany coast.

References

Books

• Rand-McNally Atlas

Web Sites

• AllRefer Encyclopedia - http://reference.allrefer.com/encyclopedia/U/Ushant.html based on The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia

• traditional, Spanish Ladies, http://www.jsward.com/shanty/SpanishLadies/shay.html credited to Iron Men & Wooden Ships, by Frank Shay

• Official website of Ouessant - http://www.ouessant.org/

The original article can be found at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ile_d'Ouessant.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.