This world map shows all the places on Earth that were first discovered by European explorers.
One of these days I will write up my experiences from sailing, but my info on St. Helena is from arriving via sailboat it won’t be too useful.
The swell where in James’ Bay pretty bad, but the people are nice as they are on most small islands. As I was paid delivery crew and there is no safe place to land a dingy, I mostly saw the island from the boat or in the dingy while picking up the owner and their friends. I guess they do now have a taxi service due to the high risk of tying up your dingy to the wharf.
For the effort it took to get there I wish I had a better story but I don’t. Perhaps I will visit on my own boat some day and have more stories and take the time to hit Ascension Island too.
Cool map. But to nitpick, it’s places that were uninhabited when first discovered by Europeans. Some were colonized but the population died out. Others were known but never colonized.
You could try this but I am sure there was an earlier thread where someone had been to Tristan Da Cunha- maybe they used a different spelling?
And I can’t hyperlink so https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=446192&highlight=tristan+cunha
There’s a sailing ship I know of that does trips from Ushuaia to Antarctica to Tristan da Cunha to South Africa. If I become independently wealthy while I’m still young enough to enjoy something like that, I very well might.
I’m curious about the latter two if you recall some examples.
Robert A. Heinlein, in his nonfiction account of his trip around the world, tells of an unscheduled stop in Tristan del Cunha. He said that, despite the inhabitants speaking English, he was less able to carry on a conversation than in Brazil, where he and most locals didn’t have any language in common. There just wasn’t enough commonality of experience, and there’s only so many times you can ask “Hey, so how about those sheep?”.
Ooooh! Me! ::raises hand::
While I’ve never studied in any depth the islands you mentioned, I have a particular fascination with Howland Island. Howland is a tiny speck of not much that’s situated more-or-less halfway between Hawaii and Fiji. In your standard American high school history textbook, its only mention is the fact that it was Amelia Earhart’s destination on her around-the-world flight when she disappeared. Otherwise, it’s pretty much been lost to history.
Which is too bad because its story is fascinating. The U.S. gov’t claimed possession in the mid nineteenth century for the purpose of guano mining, which it carried out for several decades. The island was abandoned late in the century until 1935, when an airfield was built in preparation for Earhart’s voyage. Howland has absolutely no natural resources other that some rocks, sparse grasses, and bird shit. Everything had to be brought in by ship. The orientation of the island meant that the airfield had to be built in such a way that planes landing would be hit by strong crosswinds, so ultimately it was never used. A few shacks were built, but most of the dwellings were tents.
The colonists stayed on Howland for whatever reason, periodically resupplied by a coast guard cutter. Life was pretty boring until Dec. 7th, 1941. Unaware of the morning’s events in Hawaii (the colonists were supposed to do a daily check-in with Honolulu over the radio, but on that particular morning decided that a lazy cup of coffee was more important), the 4 colonists were cleaning fish at the water’s edge when 14 Japanese bombers appeared on the horizon. The bombers dropped their payloads on the tiny “town”, destroying the solid structures. Two of the four colonists were killed. The survivors fled to the other side of the island—which was less than a mile away—where they dug a couple of coffin-sized trenches and hunkered down. The next morning a Japanese sub visited the island and shelled the remains of the town for good measure, ensuring all radio equipment was destroyed.
The two survivors buried the two men who had been killed in the initial attack and, after another visit from Japanese bombers, made the decision to stay in their tiny shelters during the day, only coming out at night. They were forced to collect rainwater for drinking, but enough canned and preserved food had survived the bombing that they didn’t go hungry. They lived like that, crouched in little trenches and only venturing out on dark moonless nights, until a U.S. Navy destroyer rescued them on January 31, 1942. They had been in those trenches 53 days.
That was the last time anyone lived on Howland.
The two men killed in the bombing—Joe Keliihananui and Dick Whaley, who was only 19—were re-interred some years later at the Hawaiian State Veteran’s Cemetery on Oahu.
Today Howland is a wildlife sanctuary and access is strictly limited. The coast guard checks up on it every once in a while, and there are annual visits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for Reasons. A navigation beacon, a lighthouse-shaped structure made of stone to act as a visible beacon for ships and aircraft, is the only remaining structure on the island.
Why the Dec. 1941 - Jan 1942 events haven’t been made into a movie yet, I don’t know.
Edit: Here’s a page that has more info, including a pic of the “town” and a pic of the two men killed in the bombing.
http://kapalama.ksbe.edu/archives/historical/huipanalaau/end.php
Calls to mind the delightful book The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby: first-hand account of the author’s voyage UK – Australia and back, as a very junior and novice seaman, on the eve of World War II; on what was then one of the last few large sailing ships in commercial service (the undertaking to which they belonged, had a “niche” function re carrying wheat from South Australia to Europe).
On the outward journey, the ship passed within sight of Tristan da Cunha, but had no reason to call there. Just then, the author was spending time with the ship’s sailmaker – a likeable old cynic who was popular with the lads in the crew: in their off-hours, he was willing to give them the hospitality of his sailmaking hold, and chat with them. The old guy recalled a time on a previous voyage when – for whatever reason – the ship had anchored off Tristan, long enough for the locals to come out in boats and do some trading. He remarked that what the locals had to offer, was essentially, souvenirs made out of penguin feathers. Quoting from memory-- the sailmaker says approximately, in his Swedish-flavoured English: “Nozzing at all but crap made vit bloddy penguin fezzers”.
I’ve never been to Saint Helena, but I am partly descended from people from there, who emigrated to the Cape Colony en masse in the 1870s.
Not a moral judgement here but a tip for those who are intriqued by these type of remote places.
While it may seem obvious to some it is not to others, but the secret here is to genuinely listed to the stories these people tell. For me at least half the reason I am interested in meeting these people is because they have different experiences. It is far less likely that you will hear about those differences if you focus on a communication style that depends on finding commonalities.
Different tastes. I’ve read everything I could find that Winchester wrote. He is one of my favorite authors. This was one of his less successful efforts IMO, but still worthwhile.
Re: island health issues, gotta read Island of the Colorblind by Sacks - another guy who is (IMO) incapable of writing an uninteresting book.
I, too, am fascinated by remote places and especially islands. The three you’ve named, Clipperton Island, St. Kilda, Sable Island, Lord Howe Island… if you haven’t read it, there’s an excellent little book called the Atlas of Remote Islands by Judith Schalansky.
However, there’s one I think I’ll cross off my bucket list - North Sentinel Island.
Got this out of the library yesterday. It’s a good read. Thanks for the recommendation.
I’m interested in the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, and the nearby Kerguelen Islands. They lie in the southern Indian ocean and are a contender for places considered the most remote These uninhabited archipelagos are roughly antipodal to Edmonton which is why they caught my interest. You can check your antipodal status here.
They have a miserable climate, cold and very windy. But the birds like them.
I have a cousin who briefly visited Ascension Island for a refueling stop a few years ago. He was in the US Air Force Reserves and got to fly down to South Africa on some gigantic plane for free to take part in an air show. As someone who has been fascinated with small, remote islands since I was a kid (especially TdC), I was insanely jealous!
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I just ordered Winchester’s book for my kindle; sadly Fogle’s book is not on kindle.
I too have explored Kerguelen and Heard and McDonald islands via google maps. And the closest piece of land antipodal to me appears to be Ile St. Paul
This was my reaction to Heinlein’s comment too. If you are willing to really listen to people you can find out an enormous amount of interesting stuff. If you’re dismissive of their lives and experiences it’s going to be a very dull conversation.
Now, okay, sheep may not be the most interesting of topics you can think of, but it isn’t mine either–and I would be interested in learning about sheep on an isolated island from an expert (ie native): what varieties are best suited to that environment and why, what the greatest risks to the flocks might be, what’s the level of veterinary care, a little about the economics of raising sheep so far from the rest of civilization, that kind of thing.
Now, I haven’t read Heinlein’s book and I wasn’t there and maybe they were as boring as all-get-out. But it feels like a missed opportunity.
How about a Dopefest on Pitcairn Island July 2, 2019, the date on which a Total Solar Eclipse will pass over the island!
Make your plans now.
I get a slight feeling at present, of there being “no end of making of books” by British authors, about tours of the UK’s scattered-worldwide surviving Crown Colonies. By pure chance, I noticed in a bookshop the other day, a relatively-new such of which I’d hitherto not heard. Called Britain’s Treasure Islands – Journey to the UK Overseas, by Stewart McPherson plus various co-authors. First published 2016. Includes, of course, the “three in the South Atlantic”.
It’s a weighty and substantial tome, with text and many illustrating colour photos: seems strongly angled toward the natural history of the various islands, but by no means ignoring their human content. I was momentarily tempted; but the price puts it out of my reach, at least at the present time.