A Spell on Tristan da Cunha
Our passage across to Tristan da Cunha was in the main uneventful
to men who had endured the rigours and inclemencies of the more
southern waters. True, there were episodes. The _Quest_ was as dirty
as ever, if not dirtier, when she met the long run of the seas; and
Gubbins Alley was deeply awash with the water we took aboard over
our swinging rails. Gubbins Alley, let me explain, is the name given
to the port alleyway, where by some strange process of maritime luck
and forces all the litter of a ship—the dirt or, as it is called,
the “gubbins”—manages to accumulate. No one is to blame for this
accumulation; it is merely chance that collects it, for the alleyway
is religiously scrubbed out every morning; but the cook works a lot
here, and the stokers empty the ashes from below on this side, so
these activities may have something to do with it. But, whatever the
reason, it is always just “Gubbins Alley.”
Down below was also very damp and ungenial, for despite all our
defences the water insisted on penetrating into the wardroom, whilst
Commander Wild’s cabin was clean swept more than once. The ship
seemed determined to show what she could do. She tried to roll the
surf-boat out of its davits, and almost succeeded—would have done, if
Mac had not raised the alarm and called us to his aid in the nick of
time. She tried with success to roll us out of our bunks just at the
hour of deepest sleep, when things of that sort appear anything but
humorous. Sometimes we thought she possessed the temperament of an
elf, but mostly she was diabolical. She flung breakfasts, lunches and
dinners off the tables into the scuppers; she shifted carefully-stowed
stores; she scalded the stokers and half-buried the trimmers. A very
lively packet.
Storms beset her with monotonous regularity; but one storm is so
like another to the lay mind that it is not necessary to enter into
intricate details. One outstanding feature of these restless days was
the souring of certain of our stores. When diving into the storerooms
to make preparations for the supplies for landing parties at Tristan
and the adjacent islands, we discovered that several bags of flour
and beans were going wrong, due, no doubt, to the constant dampness
and lack of ventilation. The stench was appalling as we hoisted up
the rotting stuff to open air for drying and disinfecting.
But at last, after a boisterous passage, we sighted Inaccessible
Island on May 19, and this island we passed about four bells in the
middle watch. The morning was dank and misty and but little could be
seen, but when our watch came on deck at 4 a.m., Commander Wild had
already sighted Tristan ahead, though it was now obscured by a dense
black cloud. Shortly afterwards the weather cleared, and we, too,
saw the island looming black and lonely out of the fog some three
points on the starboard bow. By half-past seven, being within half a
mile of the shore, we fired a rocket to attract the attention of the
islanders, or, what was perhaps as likely, to arouse them from slumber.
It was raining heavily by this time. Presently three boats put out,
and, pulled by eager hands, swiftly came alongside. The islanders
clambered aboard in a great hurry, and were all over the ship in a
moment, crying to each other in high-pitched, squeaky voices. Queer
though their intonation was, however, their English was quite good.
They were but poorly clad, clothes being one of their greatest wants.
In a few of these people the dark strain is very apparent, but the
majority are pale of face and not at all unpleasant to look upon. On
the sandy beach a bevy of women and children and dogs turned out to
give us greeting.
From where we lay the island presented a very massive front, the land
rising precipitously a thousand feet or more all along the water’s
edge, and then sloping away to the summit, some six thousand feet or
so higher. At the north-west end there is a stretch of low land like a
raised beach, where the settlement of thatched cottages lies. These,
with their vegetable gardens in front, look very like the cottages
found in the Highlands of Scotland. The whole place is very green,
especially where the houses are, and on the steeper slopes the bare
earth shows a reddish colour, and small shrub-like “island trees” grow
quite abundantly. A little to the left of the settlement is the sandy
spit where the boats are beached. These boats are commodious, if not
particularly elegant, and are made on the island, being constructed
of a stout wooden framework and a covering of waterproofed canvas.
Once aboard, our friends were not at all slow in asking for what
they wanted, offering to barter goods of their own creation in
exchange, for there is no money in the island. To them calling ships
are fabulous storehouses of wealth, sent specially to them by a
beneficent Providence—to be emptied of everything they contain for
the islanders’ immediate benefit. More insistently even than the
St. Vincent cadgers they pester one mercilessly for gifts—gifts of
any and every sort; and if any member sternly refuses to part with
his most cherished belongings they seem hurt and somewhat aggrieved.
Not that the islanders ask for things for the mere sake of asking;
I give them credit for better instincts. They are deplorably lacking
in many necessaries, and luxuries are hardly known to them. Clothes,
timber for building, implements wherewith to till a soil that is
unquestionably fertile, tools of every kind, tea, sugar—these are
the things they lack and seek.
In the matter of exchange they displayed a naïve ignorance of relative
values, and each individual established his own standards of value,
urging one to be quick before the others came along and altered the
market.
“Mister,” one smooth-tongued islander said, “have you got a mouth-organ
to give me, or a pipe, or some old clothes? I wish to be fair, and
in return I will give you a penguin skin, or a skein of home-made
wool, or a sheep, although some of our sheep are sorry specimens.”
Dr. Macklin was actually offered a perfectly good sheep for a single
stick of tobacco! Well, what can you do with such innocents? They
seem as trusting and simple as the penguins themselves; a primitive
people, unspoilt by intercourse with a prosaic, matter-of-fact world,
betraying the natural qualities of untutored mankind. You give them
everything you can spare, of course. In return they promised us a
bullock, three sheep, a pig, a number of hens and geese, and two
hundred eggs—if they could find them!
After the boats came alongside we steamed closer inshore and dropped
anchor in eight fathoms of water, in the middle of a thick field of
kelp. After breakfast the rain ceased, and for the rest of the day
the weather continued mild and warm, although the calendar told us
it was officially winter down there. I’ve known many a summer’s day
in Scotland that could have learned much from Tristan da Cunha weather!
Our forenoon was spent in hoisting on deck the stores and the mail-bags
and parcels we had brought out from England for these islanders.
Oh, you who sit at home at ease, and grow fretful if the postman
is a minute late on his rounds, think of those who depend for news
of the outer world on chance exploring expeditions which might call
every two or three years or so! Imagine a land that concerns itself
not at all with the sensational murder of yesterday nor the pending
divorce case of to-morrow, but learns vaguely, long after the last
echoes have ceased to ring in the ears of a staggered world, that
there has been some sort of a war in Europe! But the seasickness of
one of the visitors, due to the _Quest’s_ rolling—we seasoned fellows
did not notice it—was of infinitely greater importance. “‘Solid as
ocean foam!’—quoth ocean foam!”
Next day certain of us went ashore to have a good look round this
far-flung patch of civilization. We had been warned to have a care;
that, owing to the paucity of men, the women of the island had a
husband-hunting look in their eyes; and so, naturally, we walked
warily. There is an ancient deep-sea legend to the effect that a
distressed sailor, sole survivor of a deplorable wreck, was washed
ashore at Tristan da Cunha in a state of unconsciousness, and wakened
to find himself firmly married to most of the eligible females of
the island!
Our first visit was to the graveyard. Most sailors, I notice, do visit
graveyards first when they go ashore in foreign ports. I don’t know
why, unless it is to envy those who lie comfortably asleep instead
of being compelled to disturb their slumbers at every turn of the tide.
Tristan da Cunha’s graveyard was not a picture to dazzle the sight. I
thought it very dilapidated. Some few of the graves were indicated by
crazy crosses, but the large majority were hardly to be distinguished
from the surrounding earth. One, it is true, had a wooden slab at
the head. The grave of John Glass, however, a native of Kelso, and
the first settler—the Robinson Crusoe of the place—was dignified by
a marble memorial stone. Other nameless graves were defined meagrely
by square-cut blocks.
Tristan da Cunha boasts a good water supply, for it lies in a region
of much cloud, and many small streams, born in the higher lands of
the interior, flow noisily through the little settlement. Through
the ages these streams have cut deep gorges in the rock and look like
miniature cañons. All around are boulders, washed down from the hills
by the torrential rains that lave the island in the wet seasons; and
some of the houses are built crudely of these boulders, which lie
ready to hand. The problem of acquiring a house here is a simple one.
You carry a few stones to a selected site, pile them together, say
the result is a house; a house it is within the meaning of the Act,
and as there are no destructive critics to say, “It’s like a house,
but is it a house? Where’s your visitors’ bathroom and the lounge
hall?”
Not that all the houses are so ambitiously built—small stones from the
beach serve as building materials in many cases; but, even so, Robinson
Crusoe would have envied these islanders their dwelling-places. Lying
as the island does right in the track of storms, indoor embellishments
are easily obtained. If you live there and have the desire to make
an ornate home for yourself, you wait until the next ship is wrecked
and collect such timbers as come ashore; with these you panel your
_pied-à-terre_ and look down tolerantly on your less fortunate
neighbours.
It is whispered that the prayer of the really ambitious Tristan da
Cunha bride before marriage is: “God bless father, God bless mother,
God send a mail steamer ashore before my wedding-day!”
But, crude though some of the homesteads are, each one boasts its
kail-yard at its front door, its extent marked out by a fragmentary
paling. There is good soil, and in skilled hands the land could be
made lucratively fruitful.
Locomotion is two or three hundred years behind the times. The strident
“honk-honk” of the motor horn is unheard in the land. The name of Ford
is unknown. I believe there are so-called savages in Moroccan deserts
who fully appreciate the subtleties of the latest Ford car story; but
the simple people of Tristan da Cunha have never seen a Ford. Could
anything convey a more perfect impression of their remoteness?
When an islander desires to transport himself or his belongings from
one point to another he employs a rough wooden cart with solid wheels,
rough-hewn from virgin timber, and drawn by placid oxen. There is no
lack of livestock. They number their kine by the score and their sheep
by the ten-score. Donkeys are there and dogs, cats in abundance, and
thrifty, succulent geese.
Women and children dress quaintly in an old-fashioned way, wearing
long, loose garments that would either drive a Parisian _modiste_
crazy or else make her famous as the creator of a new mode. All of
them wear vivid red or yellow handkerchiefs tied about their heads,
according to the fashion established by the buccaneers of the Spanish
Main in 1680 or thereabouts.
Talking to one of the inhabitants, whose name was Henry Green—a
dark-complexioned man, whose short, curly black hair gave a hint of
African blood—I learnt that the worst months on the island were August
and September.
[Illustration: Scout Marr presents Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s Flag to
the Tristan da Cunha Troop.]
[Illustration: We go in Search of Fresh Food: Scout Marr (left),
McIlroy, Commander Wild, Dr. Macklin on the shores of Cooper’s Bay,
South Georgia.]
[Illustration: The _Quest_ off Inaccessible Island.]
The cattle then become very poor and die off from exposure on the
hills. There are no adequate shelters for them, though material to
construct such shelters exists in abundance; so they stray abroad
and die. Further, the islanders have but few agricultural implements
wherewith to develop the island’s resources. Given the advantages of
civilization, I believe they would make Tristan da Cunha a blossoming
garden; as it is, the place struck me as being derelict.
Of wood worth while there is none; island wood, cut from the trees,
is useless save for burning purposes; but occasionally the sea-gods
are kind and throw up on the beaches masses of driftwood from sinking
ships. There is turf in abundance, and a little honest hard work would
enable the people to protect their cattle thoroughly. However, hard
work and they seem to have had a quarrel some time ago, and, judging
by the evidences, the quarrel does not yet appear to have been made
up.
Whatever else the island lacked, it boasted a troop of Scouts,
inaugurated by the Rev. Martyn Rogers, who, with his wife, devotedly
immured himself in this far-away wilderness with an idea of bettering
the lot of the islander population. This troop promised well, and the
honour was given me to present it with Sir Robert Baden Powell’s flag,
especially sent out for the occasion. I accomplished the ceremony in
due form, regretting that I lacked the ability to deliver an inspiring
speech; and after it was all over—after I had inspected the Scouts and
endeavoured to tell them what scouting really meant—I accompanied the
parson and his wife to their vicarage and took tea and damper-bread
with them.
Mr. and Mrs. Rogers made light of the hardships, but it was given to
me to realize how brave a work they were doing. Delicately nurtured,
they had willingly sacrificed themselves in order that the work of
God might progress. And only those who have actually seen with their
own eyes the conditions of life in Tristan da Cunha can realize
what these devoted Christians undertook when voluntarily they cast
themselves away on this isolated patch of wave-swept land.
After dark we returned to the _Quest_ and weighed anchor immediately,
preparatory to starting for Inaccessible Island, taking with us three
Tristan volunteers as guides. But first crack of dawn showed us that
the weather conditions were entirely unfavourable for a landing on
this island; accordingly we ran for shelter to Nightingale Island,
about nine miles distant, and anchored there in a good lee. Nightingale
Island is very much smaller than Tristan, though the latter is not
enormous, measuring as it does only about twelve miles by eight. Our
immediate destination was very little more than a single sharp peak
rising some two thousand feet into the air, with lush vegetation of
tussock grass and bracken. There is no lack of bird life; thrush-like
birds, finches, skua gulls, mollymauks and petrels are abundant enough
to please the most enthusiastic ornithologist; though save for the
birds the island is uninhabited, being merely visited occasionally
by Tristanites in search of driftwood, which is the most valuable
harvest the sea gives them. Thus these inhabitants of the loneliest
populated spot on all the earth’s surface benefit by the misfortunes
and sufferings of others, for driftwood only results from wrecks;
and the fragments of many a noble ship have gone to benefit these
poverty-stricken outliers.
A landing party of Wilkins, Douglas and Carr, together with myself,
left the ship in the surf-boat; we got ashore with difficulty at a
spot where the rocks rose sheer from the sea; but there was a narrow
ledge at a negotiable height which gave us a chance of a rough, wet
scramble to terra firma and enabled us to land our scientific and
lethal equipment after a more or less breathless struggle.
We climbed a short way along the jagged rocks with our baggage, and
came to a flat, table-like area backed by high cliffs, with gigantic
boulders at their base. The geological party went right on up a narrow
gully, with the intention of inspecting a guano patch at the farther
side of the island; we others remained on our tableland for a while
whilst Mr. Wilkins shot a few birds, then we followed up the hill. From
the ship we had thought this would be easy going up a grassy slope.
We were sadly disillusioned, however, for the grass was rank tussock
and grew high above our heads, being some six to ten feet in length,
and gave the effect of a miniature jungle, being extraordinarily
difficult to break through. I was surprised at the activity of John
Glass, one of the islanders who had accompanied us. He was a man of
over fifty, and he climbed with the agility of a mountain goat. Under
foot the ground was rotten and soaking, and at every second step it
gave way, so that we sank knee deep and farther into the loathsome
bogginess. Mr. Wilkins, scoffing at danger and discomfort, continued to
shoot birds as we laboriously progressed; but though his aim was good
the reward did not always follow, as by reason of the long, tangled
grass his victims were not always found. By the time we reached the
top we were drenched to the skin; but, having achieved, we looked
breathlessly about us on an openland of small trees and loose rock,
with a peculiar kind of round-bladed grass which grew in close tufts,
very difficult to walk upon. Here more birds were shot, and then, all
parties satisfied by the exploration, we returned, sliding down the
soaking, rotten earth, stumbling blindly through the long tussock,
and slipping with monotonous frequency into the gaping potholes, all
of them full to the brim with water. We were glad to reach the ship
again to get towelled and changed.
For the night we lay off about a mile from the island under easy steam,
in order to keep clear of the rocks. At four o’clock, when I turned
out on watch, it was raining very heavily; a depressing morning, the
crash of surf on the near-by land dominating all other sounds. As
soon as it was considered safe we put closer inshore again, feeling
a very cautious way with the hand-lead, because of the indifferent
surveys of these waters, and dropped anchor once more amongst the
kelp in fifteen fathom water. Mr. Douglas and Henry Glass—another
islander—we landed on Middle Island, a small rocky patch of land
a hundred yards or so off the coast of Nightingale Island. We who
remained on board had an exciting forenoon fishing for sharks—good
sport. Our earliest intimation of their being in the neighbourhood
was when the cook, fishing with ordinary line, brought a small shark
to the surface; afterwards, with a good heaving line, we managed
to haul a round dozen of the brutes aboard—not giants of the breed,
but considerable fish of six to eight feet in length. We also caught
shoals of other fish, edible and inedible, for the waters about these
islands literally swarm with finny loot.
After fishing my fill I helped Wilkins to skin and clean the birds
he had shot, turning, as was my habit, from sailor to naturalist,
enjoying the change immensely. A trip aboard the _Quest_ ought to
qualify any man to undertake any job known to civilization, and a
few that aren’t!
At eight bells in the afternoon the boat pushed off for the shore,
and, as it was by now blowing a really stiff gale, it had a thin time
in making the island. The shore party were taken off with enormous
difficulty, at cost of thorough drenchings; but we were lucky in having
the islanders with us during this operation, for their knowledge of
the intricate channels and the really dangerous rocks enabled us to
avoid catastrophe, which threatened many times. They were excellent
boatmen and seemed entire strangers to fear.
At four o’clock next morning anchor was weighed for Inaccessible
Island; and during this short passage the _Quest_ outdid all previous
rolling performances—thanks to the stern and unanswerable bidding
of a high ground swell that ran heavily abeam. I thought I knew the
length of the ship’s foot; I thought it was impossible for her to
astonish me, but this time she did it; and a dozen times or more I was
certain nothing could prevent her capsizing. As it was, she tossed
me lightly out of my bunk—at least, I left it lightly, but gained
the deck heavily—so I thought the best thing to do was to go on deck.
Seen from a distance, the island well earns its name, for it looks
inaccessible enough to deter the stoutest hearts. No low land is
apparent, the whole rising sheer out of the fretting water; a green,
more or less oblong mass with nothing inviting about it. The boat was
got ready, stored with food and utensils and gear enough to last the
landing party for several days, as the continued inclemency of the
weather rather pointed to the fact that a return to the ship at our
own sweet will might not be possible. Two alpine axes were added to the
outfit, and a coil of rope, together with the complicated instruments
necessary for biological and geological work. The landing was effected
without mishap, although the beach was both steep and stony, and big,
noisy rollers were breaking thereon with a stern determination and
soul-curdling roars. Still, surf-bathing is a hobby with some people,
so we managed to dodge the worst of the white-crested combers, running
in between them, thus getting ashore with no serious wetting.
The beach extended for about three-quarters of a mile on either side
of where we landed, the rock rising sheer and forbidding at the ends
of the comparatively level stretch; but throughout the entire mile and
a half ours was the only safe spot for getting ashore, as elsewhere
the rocks were big and the surf very tumultuous. Behind this narrow
strip of beach the rocks rose vertically all along to an average height
of four hundred feet or thereabouts, and no doubt these conditions
determined the first discoverers to give the place its name. Rank
tussock was growing in the greatest abundance everywhere, and high up
on the skyline “island trees” were faintly visible. But anything less
like the desert island of romance it would be difficult to imagine.
Half a mile to the left of the landing-place a narrow waterfall
came tumbling over the edge of the cliff, three hundred and fifty
feet up, and splashed and roared into a deep pool gouged from virgin
rock by its own play. Beyond this the slope was slightly easier, and
there Mr. Douglas and the two men from Tristan who accompanied him
made the ascent with the greatest difficulty and no little daring.
They followed the old Alpine plan of using the rope to overcome all
obstacles.
As mountaineering was not in my own immediate programme, I assisted
Mr. Wilkins with bird-shooting and photography—gentle sports compared
with the efforts of the others. By 3 p.m. Mr. Douglas had returned,
after having fixed the contours roughly and ascertained the greatest
height for the purpose of the finished survey.
We arrived back on the _Quest_ by four, anchor was weighed at seven;
thereafter an exhaustive series of soundings were taken, and certain
errors in earlier surveys were rectified. At breakfast time we anchored
in Falmouth Bay, Tristan da Cunha, where we were promptly besieged, as
before, by swarms of curious islanders, who gave us as much attention
as though we were a strange ship arrived for the first time.
In order that the isolated denizens of this lonely isle should know in
future what events progressed in the outer world, Mac and Watts went
ashore to erect the mast for the Reverend Rogers’s wireless aerial.
I busied myself with shipwork, though the pig hampered me greatly by
an insistent determination to thrust her snout into my wash-bucket.
Oompah dredged overside and caught a young octopus, surely the ugliest
brute on earth, a veritable devil-fish, bright red in colour and with
arms full three feet in length—an ugly customer to tackle even then;
so what its great-grandfather could have been like is best left to
the imagination. We had him crawling lopsidedly about the poop for a
time, where he looked like some creature of an evil nightmare; and
then, when we’d tired of his ugliness, he was handed over to Mr.
Wilkins, who entombed him in a noble jar of methylated spirit.
In the afternoon Naisbitt, Oompah and I went ashore, to discover Mac
and Watts, more or less assisted by a hundred or so of the islanders,
trying, with the aid of tackles, ropes, improvised sheerpoles and
Portuguese windlasses and the like, to raise a sixty-foot hollow steel
pole into a vertical position. With a patch on a patch and a patch
over all, as they say at sea, they promised to be successful. Amid a
breathless suspense the structure was elevated—up and up, swaying like
a fishing-rod; but at the critical juncture the principal contraption
buckled and broke, the islanders flying like chaff before the wind; and
as the damage was irreparable, the experts had to content themselves
with erecting about two-thirds of the original length and hope for
the best, though I doubt if even now the Tristan da Cunha wireless
station is functioning to any epoch-making extent; for Mr. Rogers
admitted that he had not mastered the Morse code and was ignorant of
not a few technical details.
We three holiday makers continued on our journey, after suitable
jeers at the mechanics, in the direction of the island’s potato
patch; but as we failed to discover this historical spot we made the
best of it, caught three donkeys and rode triumphantly back to the
settlement, named after a nobler city—Edinburgh. John Glass met us,
bidding us welcome to his home with tea and pumpkin pie, which were
joyously received and rapidly consumed. He is by nature a very fine
gentleman, this islander. He entreated me not to be shy. I am rather
shy, as a matter of fact, but never until John Glass, himself a shy
man, perceived it, did I realize quite how shy.