Tristan da Cunha Has 250 People, Eight Surnames, and a Volcano That Once Forced Them All to England

Tristan da Cunha is a small group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic, 2,810 kilometers from Cape Town and 3,360 from Buenos Aires. The main island is about 12 kilometers across, dominated by a 2,000-meter volcanic peak, and home, as of 2018, to about 250 people. There is no airstrip. The only way on or off is the supply ship from Cape Town, which calls perhaps eight times a year. The journey takes six days each way.

The modern community is descended from a tiny founding pool. The first permanent settler was the American Jonathan Lambert, who claimed the island in December 1810 with three companions. Most of them died of malnutrition by the following year. A handful of subsequent arrivals — Scottish, English, Italian, Saint Helenan — became the genetic founders for everyone alive on the island today. Eight surnames cover the entire population. Several genetic disorders carried by particular founders are present at unusual frequencies; islanders have asthma rates many times the global average.

On October 10, 1961, the volcano erupted. There were 264 islanders. The whole population evacuated by boat to South Africa, then on to England, where they spent two years in a former RAF camp at Calshot in Hampshire. The British government offered to resettle them permanently. They didn't take it. By 1963 most of them had voted to return home. They sailed back, rebuilt the village, and have stayed since. The island runs as a kind of communal-property cooperative — outsiders can't buy land, all families farm, and the chief exports are rock lobster, postage stamps, and coins. A total solar eclipse will pass directly over the island on December 5, 2048.