The islands were discovered by Vancouver in 1791. Vancouver in command of two ships had visited Dusky Sound with an expedition destined for the exploration of the northwest coastline of North America. After leaving Dusky Sound, a fierce storm was encountered and the two vessels were separated. On the 23rd November, Vancouver in the Discovery discovered a group of Islands which he named the Snares. Broughton in the Chatham sighted them later in the same day and named them the Knights Islands (Broughton went on to discover a large inhabited Island which he named Chathams).
Just over one year later, December, 1772, the crew of the Britannia sighted the Snares and named them the Sunday Islands. The names Knights and Sunday gave way to that given by the first discoverer – the Snares.
Historical records of these Islands are sketchy. Little is known of the activities of sealers which obviously worked these Islands. It appears a gang of four, who were escaped convicts from Norfolk Island, were marooned on the Snares between 1810-1817 from the ship Adventure, the reason given was that the ship was running short of provisions and the captain gave the men the choice of going ashore or of starving afloat. The men were given a few potatoes which they planted. During their long exile one of the four became deranged – this alarmed the others so much that they pushed him over a cliff. The remaining three were rescued by an American ship the Enterprise which reached Philadelphia on 11 May 1818.
There are no recorded shipwrecks from the Island despite their position almost directly in the path of vessels sailing from Australia towards Cape Horn. It was intended at one stage to erect a lighthouse on the Island but with the opening of the Panama Canal the need for a lighthouse largely disappeared.
The Islands are free of introduced predators and for this reason they have a number of visiting scientific parties. The University of Canterbury biologists have a field station built on the site and incorporating the old castaways depot on the Main Island and since the early 1970’s it has been maintained and used by occasional parties.
