Tromelin

Tromelin is a flat sand island of one square kilometre, alone in the ocean north of Réunion and bare of trees. It is known for one story. A French ship carrying enslaved Malagasy people wrecked on its reef in the eighteenth century, the crew sailed away on a boat built from the wreckage, and the captives left behind survived for fifteen years before a ship came back for the last of them. Archaeologists have dug up their shelters, their tools and the copper pots they mended. A weather station is the only building. Boobies and frigatebirds nest on the sand.