It was also recorded in the 19th century as Hirst Island and Clark Island. Other early visits which left behind accounts of the island include that of the USS Dolphin in 1825, written by the United States Navy officer Hiram Paulding. According to this account, the crew of the Dolphin supplied themselves with fish from the island, although when wading back to their ship they were attacked by sharks. The English whaling ship Tuscan reached Caroline island in 1835, and the geography and wildlife of the island were recorded by the ship's surgeon, the biologist Frederick Debell Bennett, in his Narrative of a Whaling Voyage Round the Globe From the Year 18331836. Bennett knew that the island was seldom visited, "although it is usually 'sighted' by South-Seamen, when on their way from the Society Islands to the North Pacific". He noted that about seven years before the arrival of the Tuscan, a Captain Stavers had landed on the island and left behind some pigs, of which no trace remained. 1883 solar eclipse In 1883 two expeditions arrived on Caroline Island in time to observe and record the solar eclipse of 6 May. On 22 March, American and English astronomers left the Peruvian port of Callao aboard the , arriving at the island on 20 April. Among those in the American expedition were the astronomers Edward S. Holden of the Washburn Observatory, the expedition's leader, and William Upton, professor of astronomy at Brown University. An expedition from France arrived two days later in the L'Eclaireur. As small boats could not come close to the shore, the equipment was carried to the island by men standing in about of water, and then about further to the observation site. On the morning of 6 May, the sky cleared shortly before the time of first contact, and remained clear for the rest of the day. During the eclipse, the astronomers searched for Vulcan, a hypothetical intra-Mercurial planet, but discovered nothing. The duration of totality (the time the entire disc of the Sun is obscured) was 5 minutes 25 seconds, a little less than the maximum duration of 5 minutes 58 seconds. The Austrian astronomer Johann Palisa, a member of the French expedition, discovered an asteroid later that year, which he named Carolina after the island. Commercial enterprises and British claim In 1846, the Tahitian firm of Collie and Lucett attempted to establish a small