The World's Most Remote Inhabited Island Has Eight Surnames
Tristan da Cunha sits 2,400 kilometres from the next inhabited place, with a population that descends from a handful of 19th-century settlers.
The island of Tristan da Cunha is a 96-square-kilometre volcanic cone in the South Atlantic, equidistant from South Africa and South America and inconvenient to both. Saint Helena, the nearest place with people on it, is 2,400 kilometres away. Cape Town, the only port from which a ship sails for the island, is 2,800 kilometres away and goes about ten times a year, weather permitting.
The Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha sighted the island in 1506 and did not land. The first attempted settlement, by an American sealer in 1810, ended in mutiny. In 1816 the British, worried about French rescue plans for the imprisoned Napoleon on Saint Helena, garrisoned the island. When the troops withdrew the following year, Corporal William Glass and a few companions stayed on. Their constitution declared the community equal and shareholding.
The genealogy is unusually traceable. Eight founding ancestors — Glass, Swain, Cotton, Hagan, Green, Rogers, Lavarello, Repetto — arrived between 1816 and 1908, the last two from shipwrecked Italian sailors. Almost everyone alive on the island today carries one of those eight names. Most marriages are between cousins to some degree; the population is small enough that geneticists studying island isolates use it as a case study.
In October 1961 the volcano on the back of the island erupted. The 264 islanders were evacuated by ship, then by aircraft, to Britain. They lived for two years near Southampton. When given the choice, the great majority elected to return.
The island has a single doctor, a single shop, no airport, and a primary school. Internet arrived by satellite in 2006.
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