Tristan da Cunha
We made a landing! The anxiety about Tristan da Cunha, the world’s remotest inhabited archipelago, is that any landing is weather dependent. There are guests who take this voyage mainly because they want to get onto Tristan and a decision by the harbor authorities that a Zodiac operation is inadvisable can be a huge disappointment. Today we had significant swell but not from a direction that made the landing impossible and the skies cleared to give us the warmest day by far of the voyage.
Relief at making a landing combined with the warmth of the welcome of the Tristaners produced a festive atmosphere ashore. On offer were: walking tours of the Settlement, hiking parties that set off for the Potato Patches, a shore-fishing party, and a guided walk to examine the lava flows from the 1961 eruption. We even organized a round of golf on a delightful course shared with livestock but with some of the best ocean views of any golf course in the world. The afternoon tea in the community centre was a real treat with homemade cakes and local crayfish sandwiches. In the evening, the island ‘s Administrator, Sean Byrne, together with Conrad Glass, the island’s policeman—self–styled “Rockhopper Copper,” and Eric Mackenzie who has oversight of the island’s lobster fishery, came on board to answer questions in the lounge before dinner.
The Administrator represents the Governor of a group of mid-Atlantic dependencies of the British Crown that have been styled the “last pink bits” of what was the largest Empire the world had ever seen. The governor resides in St Helena but the subsidized inter-island link, the renowned Royal Mail Ship St Helena, which enabled children form Tristan to attend high school on St Helena, has been withdrawn in consequence of austerity measures in the mother country. Increasingly, Tristan is being drawn into the orbit of South Africa, its nearest continental link, some 1,500 miles away to the east. Conrad Glass is the seventh generation of his family to reside on the island, his ancestor being Corporal William Glass from Kelso in Scotland, sent to the island in 1816 at the time when Tristan to the south and Ascension Island to the north of S Helena were garrisoned to ensure that no attempts were made from these “neighboring” islands to rescue Napoleon from his enforced exile of St Helena after his defeat at Waterloo. Eric Mackenzie explained how Tristan’s well-managed lobster fishery is organized, providing the economic mainstay of an otherwise remarkably self- sufficient island. An altogether magical day shared with an admirable community.
