Tristan da Cunha

I have visted a number islands in the South Atlantic,Dassen Island,twice (not landed) Robbin Island,twice,St Helena Island,twice,Ascension Island,Twice,Fenando do Noranha and Athol das Rocas,both once but I never quite saw Tristan da Cunha,my fault really,we were only 90 miles away from it on Ocean Planet (tal gal)when my friend and crew mate Notty,thought droping that far south was an idea but the time it would take was on my mind,it was to be a 32 day crossing from Ilaha Grand,Brasil to Cape Town as it turned out.

Tristan da Cunha (37.08°S, 12.28°W) is even more remote than its sister islands of St. Helena and Ascension. Tristan lies 1,900 km SSW of St. Helena and 2,400 km from Cape Town. The island is almost circular with an area of 98 sq. km, rises to a central peak of just over 2,000 m, and is surrounded by sheer 300- to 600-m-high cliffs (topographic map). The only habitable part of Tristan is a small plateau at the foot of the cliffs on the northwest side of the island. Tristan lies in the Roaring Forties, and the weather is liable to sudden drastic changes, and is often violent.
There are five islands in the Tristan group; Tristan itself, and the smaller uninhabited islands of Nightingale, Inaccessible, Middle, and Stoltenhoff. Tristan, like St. Helena and Ascension, is volcanic in origin, as illustrated by the eruption in 1961.

History
Tristan was discovered by the Portuguese in 1506, and is named after it's discoverer, Tristao da Cunha. Tristan was seldom visited during the following centuries, but, as with Ascension, it became strategically important with the exile of Napoleon to St. Helena and the British formally annexed Tristan in August 1816. A small garrison was established on the island, and when it was withdrawn in 1817 one of the soldiers, William Glass, elected to remain on Tristan with his family. Over the following 75 years a number of settlers and shipwreck survivors joined Glass, but only a few stayed the course, adding the surnames Green (Dutch), Swain (English), Hagan (American), Rogers (American), and Repetto and Lavarello (Italian). An eighth surname, Patterson, was added only recently when an Englishman married to a Tristanian returned to settle on Tristan.

The most significant event in Tristan's recent history was the 1961 volcanic eruption and the resulting evacuation of the entire population to the UK. The eruption was of modest size, but occurred from a small cone immediately adjacent to the settlement of Edinburgh. After two years in England almost all of the 264 evacuated Tristanians elected to return to their island.