Bucket List for the Traveler: Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, Tristan da Cunha
Looking to get away from it all? Well, I have the escape of a lifetime for you, “far from the madding crowd” (Millington)! Like a green iceberg lost adrift in the turbulent sea, flung thousands of miles away from any other landmasses, lies the most remote inhabited island archipelago in the world: Tristan da Cunha (National Geographic Society, 2017). It’s about as far as you can get off the beaten path!
By: Jeremy Lewan
(The only exception is the team of less than 10--meteorologists, medics, engineers, biologists--employed yearround by the South African Weather Service at the Gough Island Weather Station (Gough Base, 2018).)
The Gough Island Weather Station
Tristan da Cunha sits almost smack-dab in the center of the remote waters of the South Atlantic Ocean, over from even its closest neighbor, St. Helena!
Tristan da Cunha is a British overseas territory consisting of six small islands: Tristan da Cunha, Inaccessible, Nightingale, Middle, Stoltenhoff, and Gough (Murray, 2014; Isaacson, 2020). Of the six, Tristan da Cunha Island, referred to simply as Tristan by the nearly 250 residents who live on the archipelago, is the only inhabited island (Isaacson, 2020).
All residents on the island live in a small settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, and are descendants of the original nine male founders on the island (Green). The nine surnames--Collins, Glass, Green, Hagan, Lavarello, Repetto, Rogers, Squibb, and Swain--preserve and are held dearly by the island’s eighty families (Green). Ethnically ambiguous, they are of diverse ancestry, including Scottish, Dutch, Italian, and American and speak a TristanianEnglish patois, a dialect influenced by Afrikaans, Italian and American tongues The Trail | 10
