Starbuck Island (or Volunteer Island) is an uninhabited coral island in the central Pacific, and is part of the Central Line Islands of Kiribati. Former names include "Barren Island", "Coral Queen Island", "Hero Island", "Low Island", and "Starve Island". Geography, flora and fauna Located at , just east from the geographic center of the Pacific Ocean (), and measuring east-to-west and north-to-south, Starbuck Island has a land area of . It is a low, dry, coral limestone island with a steep beach backed by a bank composed of large coral fragments. Several hypersaline lagoons form on the island's eastern side. These occasionally dry up, and are said to be dangerous to approach: one worker during the island's guano-mining days sank up to his neck in salty mud before being rescued. There is no freshwater on the island, which is one of the drier atolls in the Line Island group. Annual yearly rainfall averages approximately . Little vegetation exists on Starbuck; stunted Sida fallax scrub and low herbs and grasses predominate, with a few Cordia subcordata bushes and bunch grass rounding out the flora. Recent photos showed a few palm trees growing near the center of the island. The island boasts a large colony of sooty terns, estimated at 1.5 million pairs, together with Polynesian rats, feral cats, green turtles, and around fifteen other species of seabirds. Other accounts estimate the sooty tern population to be as high as three to six million birds. History James Henderson, merchant captain of the East India Company ship Hercules, sighted the island in 1819 while sailing from South America to Calcutta, India. Soon after his arrival a local newspaper, The Calcutta Journal (or Political, Commercial, and Literary Gazette), published Henderson's report of three islands which he had encountered during his voyage, but it, or he himself, had failed to state the exact date for his sighting of modern Starbuck Island. Henry Evans Maude's educated guess was that this may have been in early February 1819. The next captain known to have seen it was Obed Starbuck, captain of the whaler Hero out of Nantucket, on September 5, 1823. The island was sighted again on December 12, 1823 by Obed's first cousin, Valentine Starbuck, the American-born master of the British whaling ship . L'Aigle was carrying King Kamehameha II of Hawaii and Queen Kamāmalu and their retinue to England. Valentine Starbuck is the first non-Pacific