Suwarrow, Coral atoll in Cook Islands, Pacific Ocean

Suwarrow is a roughly quadrilateral coral atoll in the northern Cook Islands, about 930 km north-northwest of Rarotonga. Its reef, up to 800 m wide, encloses a lagoon of roughly 19 by 8 km, and the atoll's land consists of over 20 low motu islets of pale coral rock and sand, none larger than 0.1 km², covered with dense palms.

Polynesians visited Suwarrow in prehistory, but it was uninhabited when the Russian-American Company ship Suvorov arrived on 17 September 1814. In 1867 John Lavington Evans and Captain Handley B. Sterndale landed with 23 others to gather pearl shell, beche-de-mer and copra; a failed resupply left them stranded until Bully Hayes rescued them in April 1868. Britain proclaimed sovereignty on 22 April 1889, and Lever Brothers held a lease from 1903 until a 1914 cyclone ended its operations.

Tom Neale documented his solitary life on the atoll through three periods between 1952 and 1977 in his publication 'An Island to Oneself'.

Access is by boat only, as the atoll lies far from other islands in the Pacific. Visitors should prepare for isolated conditions and bring necessary supplies with them.

The atoll has no Polynesian name. It was named after the Russian brig Suvorov, whose crew sighted it on 17 September 1814; the ship in turn honoured General Alexander Suvorov, spelled "Suwarrow" in Byron's Don Juan. New Zealand later adopted Suwarrow as the official spelling.