The Most Remote Inhabited Island Was Evacuated by Volcano in 1961

Tristan da Cunha is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic, roughly 2,400 km from the South African coast and 3,300 km from Brazil. The single settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, sits on the only flat shelf of land. It is the most remote permanently inhabited place on Earth: no airstrip, no harbor large enough for a freighter, supply ships every few months.

In August 1961 the ground behind Edinburgh started shaking. Small earthquakes and rockfalls picked up over the next two months. On October 10 a new volcanic vent — a parasitic cone of the main Queen Mary's Peak — opened a few hundred meters from the settlement and began throwing lava. The full population of 264 was on the only two fishing boats on the island, the Tristania and the Frances Repetto, and out to nearby Nightingale Island within a day.

The Dutch passenger ship Tjisadane picked them up the next morning, took them to Cape Town, and from there they boarded the RMS Stirling Castle for Southampton, arriving in England on November 3, 1961. Britain absorbed them. The press treated the islanders as a curiosity, surprised that they had electricity and English; the islanders mostly wanted to go home.

The vent quieted in 1963. A Royal Society survey confirmed Edinburgh was livable, and most of the islanders sailed back. About five families chose to stay in England. The settlement has been continuously inhabited since the return — currently about 240 people, almost all descended from the original 19th-century settlers, the surnames a short list (Glass, Repetto, Swain, Hagan, Rogers, Green, Lavarello). Edinburgh of the Seven Seas remains the only town for several time zones in any direction.