Tristan da Cunha and its South Africa connections

Severe earth tremors on the island of Tristan da Cunha in early October 1961 led to the evacuation of the island’s 269 residents to Cape Town. The island’s volcano, Queen Mary’s Peak, had been restless since 06 August 1961, with earth tremors increasing as time went on. There were landslides during August and September.

On 08 October an earthquake and landslide forced residents on the east side to move to the west side. The following morning saw a fissure open between the residential area and the canning factory. The island’s administrator, Peter WHEELER, issued an evacuation order for all islanders to move to huts located at the potato patches. The men gathered as much warm clothing and bedding as they could.

By 10 October the rising ground had become a new volcanic cone. An evacuation order was issued to evacuate the island. The rock lobster boats Tristania (under Captain Morris T. SCOTT) and Francis Repetto took the islanders to the uninhabited Nightingale Island to shelter overnight. Without enough logistics, farm animals and domestic pets were left behind. The next morning, the Dutch liner Tjisadane, which was due to pick up two Tristan women to embark on nurse training in Cape Town, picked up the marooned islanders. They arrived in Cape Town on 16 October.

After three and a half days at full speed, the British frigate HMS Leopard (under Commander P. HICKS-BEACH) arrived from Simon’s Town with tarpaulins, clothing, medical supplies, and food on October 13 to find that lava and smoke were pouring out of the 80-meter-high mound. The crew managed to salvage the church organ, a gift from Queen Elizabeth.

A crowd of several hundred gathered at the Cape Town quayside to welcome the islanders who stood in groups on the deck of the liner as it entered the harbour. For most of them it was the first sight of any country outside their own island. There were 34 married couples (with 66 children of 14 years and under), 27 married couples with no children, 42 single men and 39 single women. Amongst them were:
Willie REPETTO (59), the island’s chief
Rev. Charles John JEWETT of Bristol, the Anglican priest on the island; his wife; and three children
Sidney GLASS, the great-great-grandson of Corporal William GLASS, the island’s original settler
Bill Lewis GLASS (13)
Tim GREEN
a two-day-old infant
Margaret WHEELER and her three children
Basil LAVARELLO (30) considered staying in Cape Town; he was the former assistant manager of the canning factory.
Alfred GREEN (72) was the oldest male and first used a telephone while in Cape Town.

Two thanksgiving services were held in Cape Town churches. The Cape Town Red Cross arranged for clothing donations and was overwhelmed with the response. Many of the refugees took up offers of tours of Cape Town. On 19 October, about 260 evacuees were hosted at an event in Simon’s Town by George COTTON (91), who was born on Tristan da Cunha. On 20 October, hundreds of people bid 264 evacuees farewell when they boarded the RMS Stirling Castle. More than six tonnes of donated goods loaded onto the ship helped the evacuees start a new life. They arrived in Southampton on 03 November. When the ship docked, the islanders were met by officials, volunteers and a large crowd of reporters and film crews.

They were housed in an army barracks at Mersham, Surrey, before being transferred to an RAF base at Calshot on 21 January 1962, where they were housed in 64 houses in the old married quarters. The former RAF accommodation block and road was renamed Tristan Close. The RAF base had closed in April 1961 and was empty. While in England, they saw cars, elevators and cinemas for the first time. The women were given lectures on using electric stoves rather than paraffin or oil stoves and shown how to use washing machines and electric irons. The men were taught the basics of electrical work around the house.

Eighteen children were enrolled at Hardley Secondary School in Holbury and 22 at Blackfield Primary. Some islanders were given employment at Dreamland in Hythe, an electric blanket factory; at Brush Crystals, a factory that made components for transistor radios; the Beaulieu Motor Museum; a boat builder in Hythe; and a food-processing firm in Lymington. They also had to cope with the exceptionally harsh winter of 1962-63. Three islanders died of pneumonia by mid-December, while others were ill with pneumonia, bronchitis, and influenza. Annie SWAIN (84) and Maria LAVARELLO (66) died at Redhill. Due to their isolated life on the island, they had low resistance to diseases in England.

The British Medical Research Council established a working party to examine 198 adults and 61 children. Their final report stated that the adults looked young for their age, were thin but robust, and were of less than average height. The children had less superficial fat than usual in Britain. The commonest illness was asthma. Defects in the retina of the eye were found in 16 islanders.

When the HMS Jaguar visited the island in December 1961, the crew saw cattle grazing and chickens among the houses, but no dogs were seen. A joint South African and Royal Society expedition to the island left from Simon’s Town ‘aboard the South African Navy frigate Transvaal on 22 January 1962 to study the volcanic activity. The expedition returned to Simon’s Town on 26 March 1962. While on the island, the expedition team discovered that the 15 dogs left behind by the islanders during their evacuation had killed about 700 sheep, leaving only 32 alive. All the dogs, except for one on the higher slopes of the island, were put down by the Royal Society. The island’s cats and poultry were left. The donkeys were in excellent shape and were also left behind. The Royal Navy ice patrol ship, Protector, brought back a black cat named Tristy, who belonged to one of the administrative staff on the island. He was adopted by a Royal Navy officer at Youngsfield. The canning factory was no more.

In England, the homesick islanders lobbied to return home. A farewell service was held at St George’s Chapel in Calshot, followed by a party arranged by the New Forest Women’s Voluntary Services. A resettlement survey party, including 12 islanders led by Johnny REPETTO (52), left Southampton on 09 August 1962 aboard the Stirling Castle for Cape Town, from where they boarded the rock lobster boat, Tristania, and arrived on the island on 08 September. Six of the men were going to work on the fishing boats while the other six prepared the houses, cared for the cattle and built a landing for boats. In October, Mr H.H. STABLEFORD, the Colonial Office representative, returned from the island. He reported that most of the stores left behind were intact, except for sugar and flour. About 240 cattle looked well. The sheep were living in the mountains. Most of the cats had died. The cattle had not become wild. The houses, except for one, were in good shape.

Christmas 1962 was not a happy one for the homesick islanders in England. One-fourth of them were jobless, and many could not afford meat for a Christmas lunch. On the island, Christmas was a religious month-long celebration where fattened sheep, pigs and chickens fed everyone. Willie REPETTO (60) had only found part-time work at a construction company. He said that life in England was “Money, money, money. Noise, noise, noise. Worry, worry, worry.”

The British Colonial Office arranged a ballot in December 1962, and the islanders, over 21 years of age, voted 148-to-5 in favour of returning. The first party of 51 islanders left Tilbury on 17 March 1963 on the RMS Amazon. They transferred to the MV Boissevain and arrived on Tristan da Cunha on 09 April. The remaining 198 islanders, led by Joseph GLASS (64), left Southampton aboard the Danish ship Bornholm on 10 November 1963, including four Tristan women who had married Englishmen. They took with them bedding, food supplies, clothing, transistor radios, record players, nylon stockings, beauty products, and three tonnes of seed potatoes to plant in June and July. They were allowed to take six dogs but no cats. One of the dogs, a Welsh Collie named Singy, belonged to Joe REPETTO. Peter DAY accompanied them as administrator.

One of the evacuees that remained in England was Adam SWAIN, who settled in Hythe and spent part of his working life at Husbands Shipyard in Marchwood. He helped recover the wreck of the Tudor warship Mary Rose in 1982 and also served as a foreman at the Winfrith Atomic Energy Establishment in Dorset. He died aged 80 in 2016. Dennis GREEN also stayed in England with his wife Ada and lived in Calshot. He worked at Fawley power station for more than 25 years and died aged 89 in 2020.

In 1506, Tristão DA CUNHA, a Portuguese sea captain, discovered a group of six small islands in the South Atlantic Ocean, between South Africa and South America. The largest island had a volcano in the middle. He named the island after himself. The first permanent settler was Jonathan LAMBERT of Salem, Massachusetts, who arrived in December 1810 with two men, later joined by a fourth. Three of the four men died in 1812, leaving Thomas CURRIE (Tommaso CORRI from Livorno, Italy) as the sole survivor, who remained as a farmer on the island.

In 1816, the British annexed the islands, and they became a British garrison. Hottentot Gulch is named after Cape soldiers who pitched their tents there in 1816 as part of a British garrison that was dispatched to ward off pirates and the French who might have used the island as a staging post to rescue Napoleon, who was imprisoned on St Helena Island. The garrison departed in November 1817. A corporal from Kelso, Scotland, William GLASS (1786-1853), and two English stonemasons stayed behind. William was accompanied by his wife Maria Magdalena LEENDERS (1801-1858) and two children. Maria was born in Cape Town, where she married William on 01 July 1814 while he was stationed at the Cape. William and the stonemasons built homes and boats from salvaged driftwood and drafted a constitution based on equality and cooperation. They were joined by stowaways and shipwrecked English, Irish, Dutch, Italians, and people from St Helena.

William and Maria had eight sons and eight daughters. By the time William died in 1853, some of his sons were whalers, and some of his daughters had married whalers and had settled in New London, one of the major whaling ports on the coast of New England. After William’s death, Maria and 25 of her family members left the island on whaling boats to settle in New London. One of their sons, Thomas, and a grandson returned 10 years later and settled in the old family home on the island. Thomas married Mary SWAIN, a daughter of Thomas Hill SWAIN. Thomas and Mary had five sons: Joseph, John, Robert, William and Thomas; and a daughter, Jane (who married an Italian, Gaetano LAVARELLO).

By 1824, a small civilian community had developed alongside the garrison. In March 1824, there were 22 men and three women. In 1836, a Dutch shipwreck survivor and fisherman, Pieter GROEN from Katwijk, settled on the island. He changed his name to Peter GREEN. By 1856, the population had grown to 97 residents. In 1857, 45 people left the island and settled in the Cape. In 1867, the only settlement was named Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, in honour of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, a second son of Queen Victoria. In 1873, there were 15 families, making up 86 residents. The islanders lived an isolated life except for an annual visit by a supply ship. The gene pool was very small. In 1897, there were only 64 residents on the island. In 1892, two shipwrecked Italian sailors, Gaetano LAVARELLO and Andrea REPETTO, settled on the island.

The island is a British Overseas Territory, almost 3,000 kilometres from the nearest mainland. Its closest inhabited neighbour is the island of St. Helena, which is about 2,400 kilometres away. There is no airport on the island; the only way of travelling to or from Tristan is by ship. There are no hotels on the island; visitors stay with the locals. The island has internet service. In 2017, the island had a hospital with two doctors and five nurses and one school for 34 children. By the end of 2024, there were 238 residents on the island.

The British government commissioned the island as a weather station in World War I. In World War II, Tristan da Cunha became an important asset for the British, who monitored German U-boat movements. The islanders helped construct the station and were paid in naval goods, as the only currency used on the island was potatoes. During the war, the island’s first newspaper, the Tristan Times, was founded. Paid employment was introduced in the 1940s with the introduction of a commercial fishery. In 1949 a South African company set up a canning factory on the island. They paid wages of about 10 shillings a day and also provided a doctor, nurse, agriculturist, and school teacher.

Mr G.F. HARRIS, the British administrator on the island from 1956 to 1958, stated that in three of the six weddings in 1957, three of the respective grandparents of the bride and groom were brothers and sisters. In one case, two of the respective grandparents were so related. In another, the bride’s parents were first cousins.

In the 1950s, the Tristan islanders reached an agreement with the South African government to allow the South Africans to build a weather station on Gough Island. With this agreement came annual visits from the South African Navy. From 1965 to 1967, a new harbour was built. Roads, a hospital, and sewerage facilities were constructed, and electricity generators were brought in. The diesel generators were housed in the fishing factory. The nine-hole golf course was built in 1977 for a homesick British administrator, but hazards include chicken coops, cows and gale-force winds. In 2008, after a fire caused extensive damage, consultants and contractors from South Africa were hired to upgrade the system to modern standards with enough power to provide for settlement growth.

By 2014, there were 262 full-time residents on the island including:
Iris GREEN, the postmistress
Dawn REPETTO, the tourism coordinator
Conrad GLASS, the island’s chief constable
Desiree REPETTO, daughter of Peter REPETTO
Anthony GREEN
Patricia REPETTO
Ches LAVARELLO
Harold GREEN, the great-grandfather of Natasha WILLIAMS
Gladys LAVARELLO, grand-daughter of Gaetano LAVARELLO

Residents make their living from farming and fishing. Lobsters are the island’s main export: whole lobsters for Japan and tails for the USA.

A book was published in 2021 – Nothing Can Stop Us: Tristan da Cunha’s 1961 volcanic eruption and how its people handled their future, by Richard Grundy and Neil Robson.