Tristan da Cunha
We all have fond memories of our recent visit to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. Many have described to me how struck they were by the island’s peacefulness. My main impression, perversely perhaps, was a contrary one of being struck by the lively sounds of a working community. For The Settlement, as the islanders call it, was no silent village. When I paused to inspect some cottages (how like the “black houses” on the Isle of Lewis they were: could there be a connection?) my heart raced from a symphony of village life from yesteryear. Children’s voices playing in the fields, a young man driving his cows along the street, boats being scraped and painted, women talking over the garden wall as they pegged out the washing, older men digging their kitchen gardens. There was laughter over drinks in the Café as children meandered their way home from school. Outside the village was the healthiest-looking dairy herd I have set eyes on for a long while, lean Welsh Blacks and Herefords, whose only supplement to the lush pasture that grows year-round is hay and potatoes - no foot and mouth or BSE here. And high up the slopes the constant bleating of the sheep, a mixture of Cheviots and Scottish Black Faces.
One of the joys of traveling aboard the M.S. Endeavour is the opportunity it affords to make unlikely connections. For, as I walked over to the potato patches, I began about the St Kildans, inhabitants of a remote island in the north Atlantic that we visit on our expeditions around the British Isles. Its settlement is about the same size as that on Tristan da Cunha but no one lives in the ruined cottages anymore. The last of the St Kildans were evacuated from the island in 1930. That ancient community was killed off by a number of factors. The arrival of missionaries who enforced so severe a sabbatarianism that work practices were disrupted exacerbated by the arrival of frequent tripper boats from Glasgow that led to a dependency on the trading of nick-knacks to the detriment for traditional self-sufficiency.
Should we worry for the future of Tristan da Cunha? Not for the above reasons, I suspect. They have two long-established and flourishing churches, one Anglican (Episcopalian) and the other Roman Catholic, and the Tristaners seem altogether too commonsensical to fall prey to cults. And sheer remoteness means that if an expedition ship like ours calls by a couple of times a year it is a welcome diversion. We were able to help by donating books for the community center and to the hurricane relief fund. But as I returned to the Settlement, I did catch sight of the satellite dishes that have arrived on the island in just the past few years. How are they going to keep them down on the farm now that they’re watching TV, I wondered? Watch this space. And if you want to see Tristan da Cunha the living village, don’t put off the journey for too long.
We all have fond memories of our recent visit to the remote island of Tristan da Cunha. Many have described to me how struck they were by the island’s peacefulness. My main impression, perversely perhaps, was a contrary one of being struck by the lively sounds of a working community. For The Settlement, as the islanders call it, was no silent village. When I paused to inspect some cottages (how like the “black houses” on the Isle of Lewis they were: could there be a connection?) my heart raced from a symphony of village life from yesteryear. Children’s voices playing in the fields, a young man driving his cows along the street, boats being scraped and painted, women talking over the garden wall as they pegged out the washing, older men digging their kitchen gardens. There was laughter over drinks in the Café as children meandered their way home from school. Outside the village was the healthiest-looking dairy herd I have set eyes on for a long while, lean Welsh Blacks and Herefords, whose only supplement to the lush pasture that grows year-round is hay and potatoes - no foot and mouth or BSE here. And high up the slopes the constant bleating of the sheep, a mixture of Cheviots and Scottish Black Faces.
One of the joys of traveling aboard the M.S. Endeavour is the opportunity it affords to make unlikely connections. For, as I walked over to the potato patches, I began about the St Kildans, inhabitants of a remote island in the north Atlantic that we visit on our expeditions around the British Isles. Its settlement is about the same size as that on Tristan da Cunha but no one lives in the ruined cottages anymore. The last of the St Kildans were evacuated from the island in 1930. That ancient community was killed off by a number of factors. The arrival of missionaries who enforced so severe a sabbatarianism that work practices were disrupted exacerbated by the arrival of frequent tripper boats from Glasgow that led to a dependency on the trading of nick-knacks to the detriment for traditional self-sufficiency.
Should we worry for the future of Tristan da Cunha? Not for the above reasons, I suspect. They have two long-established and flourishing churches, one Anglican (Episcopalian) and the other Roman Catholic, and the Tristaners seem altogether too commonsensical to fall prey to cults. And sheer remoteness means that if an expedition ship like ours calls by a couple of times a year it is a welcome diversion. We were able to help by donating books for the community center and to the hurricane relief fund. But as I returned to the Settlement, I did catch sight of the satellite dishes that have arrived on the island in just the past few years. How are they going to keep them down on the farm now that they’re watching TV, I wondered? Watch this space. And if you want to see Tristan da Cunha the living village, don’t put off the journey for too long.
