Pitt Coast

Pitt Bank is a submerged atoll in the southwestern Chagos Archipelago, its shallow rim lying beneath the Indian Ocean near Egmont Atoll. Portuguese sailors knew the Chagos in the sixteenth century, and the reefs could be treacherous: the Conceição was wrecked at Peros Banhos in 1556. French settlers established plantations on islands of the archipelago in the late eighteenth century, using enslaved labour. In 1814 the Chagos passed with Mauritius to Britain.