Tristan Archipelago

Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is one of three constituent parts of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, with its own constitution.

The territory consists of the inhabited island Tristan da Cunha, which has a diameter of roughly and an area of ; the wildlife reserves of Gough Island and Inaccessible Island; and the smaller, uninhabited Nightingale Islands. , the main island had 250 permanent inhabitants, who all carry British Overseas Territories citizenship. The other islands are uninhabited, except for the South African personnel of a weather station on Gough Island.

As there is no airstrip on the island, the only way of travelling to or from Tristan is by ship. There are six-day journeys from Cape Town, South Africa, and some cruises offered departing from Ushuaia, Argentina.

History

Discovery

The islands were first recorded as sighted in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha, though rough seas prevented a landing. He believed them to be uninhabited, and named the main island after himself, . It was later anglicised from its earliest mention on British Admiralty charts to Tristan da Cunha Island. Some sources state that the Portuguese made the first landing in 1520, when ''Lás Rafael'', captained by Ruy Vaz Pereira, called at Tristan for water.

The first undisputed landing was made on 7 February 1643 by the crew of the Dutch East India Company ship ''Heemstede,'' captained by Claes Gerritsz Bierenbroodspot. The Dutch stopped at the island four more times in the next 25years, and in 1656 created the first rough charts of the archipelago.

The first full survey of the archipelago was made by the crew of the French corvette ''Heure du Berger'' in 1767. The first scientific exploration was conducted by French naturalist Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars, who stayed on the island for three days in January 1793, during a French mercantile expedition from Brest, France, to Mauritius. Thouars made botanical collections and reported traces of human habitation, including fireplaces and overgrown gardens, probably left by Dutch explorers in the 17th century.

On his voyage out from Europe to East Africa and India in command of the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp ship, ''Joseph and Theresa'', William Bolts sighted Tristan da Cunha, put a landing party ashore on 2 February 1777 and hoisted the Imperial flag, naming it and its neighbouring islets the Brabant Islands. However, no settlement or facilities were ever set up there by the company.

After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War halted penal transportation to the Thirteen Colonies, British prisons started to overcrowd. As several stopgap measures proved to be ineffective, the British Government announced in December 1785 that it would proceed with the settlement of New South Wales. In September 1786 Alexander Dalrymple, presumably goaded by Bolts's actions, published a pamphlet with an alternative proposal of his own for settlements on Tristan da Cunha, St. Paul and Amsterdam islands in the Southern Ocean.

Captain John Blankett, R.N., also suggested independently to his superiors in August 1786 that convicts be used to establish a British settlement on Tristan. In consequence, the Admiralty received orders from the government in October 1789 to examine the island as part of a general survey of the South Atlantic and the coasts of southern Africa. That did not happen, but an investigation of Tristan, Amsterdam and St. Paul was undertaken in December 1792 and January 1793 by George Macartney, Britain's first ambassador to China. During his voyage to China, he established that none of the islands were suitable for settlement.

19th century

The first permanent settler was Jonathan Lambert of Salem, Massachusetts, United States, who moved to the island in December 1810 with two other men, to be joined later by a fourth. Lambert publicly declared the islands his property and named them the Islands of Refreshment. Three of the four men died in 1812 and Thomas Currie (Tommaso Corri, from Livorno, Italy), one of the original three, remained as a farmer on the island.

On 14 August 1816, the United Kingdom annexed the islands by sending a garrison to secure possession, and making them a dependency of the Cape Colony in South Africa. This was explained as a measure to prevent the islands' use as a base for any attempt to free Napoleon Bonaparte from his prison on Saint Helena. The occupation also prevented the United States from using Tristan da Cunha as a base for naval cruisers, as it had during the War of 1812. The garrison left the islands in November 1817, although some members of the garrison, notably William Glass, stayed and formed the nucleus of a permanent population.

The artist Augustus Earle spent eight months stranded there in 1824. He had been on the aging ship ''Duke of Gloucester'', bound for Calcutta, which had anchored there for three days due to a storm. Earle and a crew member were left when the ''Gloucester'' unexpectedly sailed. Earle tutored several children and painted until his supplies ran out. He was rescued in late November by the ship on its way to Hobart.

The islands were occupied by a garrison of British Marines, and a civilian population gradually grew. stopped there on 25 March 1824 and reported that it had a population of twenty-two men and three women. The barque ''South Australia'' stayed there on 18–20 February 1836 when a certain Glass was governor, as reported in a chapter on the island by W. H. Leigh. Also in 1836, the schooner ''Emily'' ran aground with the Dutch fisherman Pieter Groen from Katwijk. He stayed, married there, changed his name to Peter Green and in 1865 became spokesman/governor of the community. In 1856, there were already 97 people living there.

A parson arrived in February 1851, the Bishop of Cape Town visited in March 1856 and the island was included within the diocese of Cape Town.

In 1867, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, visited the islands. The only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, was named in honour of his visit. On 15 October 1873, the Royal Navy scientific survey vessel HMS ''Challenger'' docked at Tristan to conduct geographic and zoological surveys on Tristan, Inaccessible Island and the Nightingale Islands. In his log, Captain George Nares recorded a total of fifteen families and eighty-six individuals living on the island. Tristan became a dependency of the British Crown in October 1875.

Whalers set up bases on the islands for operations in the Southern Atlantic. However, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, together with the gradual transition from sailing ships to coal-fired steam ships, increased the isolation of the islands, which were no longer needed as a stopping port for lengthy sail voyages, or for shelter for journeys from Europe to East Asia.

On 27 November 1885, the island suffered one of its worst tragedies after an iron barque named ''West Riding'' approached the island, whilst en route to Sydney, Australia, from Bristol. Due to the loss of regular trading opportunities, almost all of the island's able-bodied men approached the ship in a lifeboat attempting to trade with the passing vessel. The boat, recently donated by the British government, sailed despite rough waters and, although the lifeboat was spotted sailing alongside the ship for some time, it never returned. Various reports were given following the event, with rumours ranging from the men drowning, to reports of them being taken to Australia and sold as slaves. In total, 15 men were lost, leaving behind an island of widows. A plaque at St. Mary's Church commemorates the lost men.

20th century

Hard winter of 1906

After years of hardship since the 1880s and an especially difficult winter in 1906, the British government offered to evacuate the island in 1907. The Tristanians held a meeting and decided to refuse, despite the government's warning that it could not promise further help in the future.

Occasional pre-war visits

No ships called at the islands from 1909 until 1919, when HMS ''Yarmouth'' stopped to inform the islanders of the outcome of World War I.

The Shackleton–Rowett Expedition stopped in Tristan for five days in May 1922, collecting geological and botanical samples before returning to Cape Town. Among the few ships that visited in the coming years were the RMS ''Asturias'', a Royal Mail Steam Packet Company passenger liner, in 1927, and the Canadian Pacific ocean liners RMS ''Empress of France'' in 1928, in 1929, and RMS ''Empress of Australia'' in 1935.

In 1936, ''The Daily Telegraph'' of London reported that the population of the island was 167 people, with 185 cattle and 42 horses.

From December 1937 to March 1938, a Norwegian party made a dedicated scientific expedition to Tristan da Cunha, and sociologist Peter A. Munch extensively documented island culture; he visited the island again in 1964–1965. The island was also visited in 1938 by W. Robert Foran, reporting for the National Geographic Society. His account was published that same year.

On 12 January 1938 by letters patent, Britain declared the islands a dependency of Saint Helena, creating the British Crown Colony of Saint Helena and Dependencies, which also included Ascension Island.

World War II military development

During the Second World War, Tristan was commissioned by the Royal Navy as the so-called "stone frigate" and used as a secret signals intelligence station, to monitor German U-boats (which were required to maintain radio contact) and shipping in the South Atlantic Ocean. The weather and radio stations led to extensive new infrastructure being built on the island, including a school, a hospital, and a cash-based general store.

The first colonial official sent to rule the island was Sir Hugh Elliott in the rank of administrator (because the settlement was too small to merit a governor) 1950–1953. Development continued as the island's first canning factory expanded paid employment in 1949.

Rare post-war ship visits

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the Queen's consort, visited the islands in 1957 as part of a world tour on board the royal yacht HMY ''Britannia''.

On 2 January 1954, Tristan da Cunha was visited by the Dutch ship ''Willem Ruys'', a passenger-cargo liner, carrying science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, his wife Ginny and other passengers. The ''Ruys'' was travelling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Cape Town, South Africa. The visit is described in Heinlein's book '' Tramp Royale''. The captain told Heinlein the island was the most isolated inhabited spot on Earth and ships rarely visited. Heinlein mailed a letter from there to L. Ron Hubbard, a friend who also liked to travel, "for the curiosity value of the postmark". Biographer William H. Patterson Jr. in his two volume ''Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with his Century'', wrote that lack of "cultural context" made it "nearly impossible to converse" with the islanders, "a stark contrast with the way they had managed to chat with strangers" while travelling in South America. Members of the crew bought penguins during their brief visit to the island.

1961 eruption of Queen Mary's Peak

On 10 October 1961, the eruption of a parasitic cone of Queen Mary's Peak, very close to Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, forced evacuation of all 264 people. The evacuees took to the water in open boats, taken by the local lobster-fishing boats ''Tristania'' and ''Frances Repetto'' to uninhabited Nightingale Island.

The next day, they were picked up by the diverted Dutch passenger ship ''Tjisadane'' that took them to Cape Town. The islanders later arrived in the U.K. aboard the liner M.V. ''Stirling Castle'' to a big press reception and, after a short period at Pendell Army Camp in Merstham, Surrey, were settled in an old Royal Air Force camp near Calshot, Hampshire.

The following year, a Royal Society expedition reported that Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had survived. Most families returned in 1963.

Gough and Inaccessible Islands wildlife reserves

Gough Island was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 as Gough Island Wildlife Reserve. This was further extended in 2004 as Gough and Inaccessible Islands, with its marine zone extended from 3 to 12 nautical miles.

These islands have been Ramsar site

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