Tristan Islanders
Tristan Islanders Welcome the New Year
On the last day of December, the Tristan Islanders celebrate Old Year’s Night rather than New Year’s Eve. However, according to the official Tristan da Cunha Website, this year there have been some changes in their normal holiday patterns. The late arrivals of two major supply ships, the MV Baltic Trader on December 19 and […]
Proposed Constitution for Tristan da Cunha
The Tristan Times reported last week that a Constitutional Review Team would be arriving on St. Helena island on November 12th for a visit that may last about two and a half days. Tristan da Cunha, which has 268 residents, is administered as a dependency of St. Helena, a British Overseas Territory with a population […]
A Sociologist Visits Tristan da Cunha [book review]
The personal diary of Peter A. Munch, a young sociologist who joined a Norwegian scientific expedition to Tristan da Cunha in the autumn of 1937, has recently been published. Munch published his landmark dissertation the Sociology of Tristan da Cunha in 1945, and several decades later he wrote a number of scholarly journal articles about […]
New Fishing Factory Being Built for Tristan da Cunha
A new fishing factory is rapidly being fabricated in Cape Town to replace the one that burned to the ground on Tristan da Cunha in February. According to a story in the South African paper The Star on Saturday, the Cape Town manufacturing firm Anchor Steel is constructing the new building and getting it ready […]
Tristan Islanders Have a New Generator and a Rebuilt Harbor
The British sappers finished their work rebuilding the Tristan da Cunha harbor last Wednesday, March 26, and finally left the islands on Friday. The web page of the Tristan da Cunha Website devoted to the month-long harbor rebuilding project, called Operation Zest, includes 45 small pictures of the sappers, the British military engineers, doing their […]
Major Disaster on Tristan da Cunha
In the pre-dawn hours last Wednesday morning, February 13, a fire of unknown origin completely destroyed the fish processing factory on Tristan da Cunha. The blaze ruined the major source of employment and wages in the settlement, plus it consumed the primary generator of electric power on the island. By the time the blaze was […]
Rebuilding the Harbor of Tristan da Cunha
An announcement two weeks ago about British plans to rebuild the harbor of the settlement on Tristan da Cunha seemed, at first, to be welcome news. The Administrator of the colony, David Morley, briefed the Tristan Islanders on developments. A contingent of Royal Engineers would be arriving at Tristan on Thursday January 24 to appraise […]
High-tech Medical Care for Tristan Islanders
The doctor for Tristan da Cunha, perhaps the most remote inhabited island in the world, has just been connected to the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center through a high-speed, Internet service. The system that several agencies have established allows the island’s only doctor, Carel Van der Merwe, to record and transmit medical data—X-rays, EKGs, examinations—about […]
Unique Speech Patterns on Tristan da Cunha [journal article review]
Much as gidday is often used as a greeting in Australia, or howdy in parts of the U.S., the Tristan Islanders frequently say how you is? when they encounter one another. Uses of these kinds of formulaic greetings vary in different countries, according to a recent linguistics journal article, and the variations often convey local […]
Blogging a Birth on Tristan da Cunha
Erik and Claire celebrated the birth of their daughter Caitlin Mac Kenzie in the Camogli Hospital of Tristan da Cunha by posting, on January 19th, a couple blog entries with photos of the baby. In such a small community, it would not be surprising for the birth of a baby to be good news, but […]
