Three Years in Tristan da Cunha | Page 2

the Island of
Tristan da Cunha, as the people had had no clergyman for seventeen
years.
Now, Tristan da Cunha was not an unknown name to us, for as a child
my husband loved to hear his mother tell of her shipwreck on
Inaccessible, an uninhabited island twenty-five miles south-west of
Tristan da Cunha.
She, then a child of four, and her nurse were passengers on the Blendon
Hall, which left London for India in May 1821, and was wrecked
during a dense fog on Inaccessible, July 23. The passengers and crew
drifted ashore on spars and fragments of the vessel. Two of the crew
perished, and nearly all the stores were lost. For four months they lived
on this desolate island. A tent made out of sails was erected on the
shore to protect the women and children from the cold and rain. They
lived almost entirely on the eggs of sea-birds.
After waiting some time in hope of being seen by a ship, they made a
raft from the remains of the wreck, and eight of the crew set off in it to
try to reach Tristan, but were never heard of again, poor fellows. A few
weeks later a second and successful attempt was made. The men
reached Tristan, but in a very exhausted state. Then the Tristanites, led
by Corporal Glass, manned their boats, and at great personal risk

succeeded in fetching off the rest of the crew and passengers, who
remained on Tristan till January 9, 1822, on which day a passing
English brig took them to the Cape of Good Hope.
This was eighty-four years ago. And now the son of that little
shipwrecked girl was seriously thinking of going out to minister to the
children of her rescuers. Here I may mention that in the whole of their
history, from 1816 to 1906, they had had only two clergymen living
amongst them.
The first to go out was the Rev. W. F. Taylor, under the S.P.G. in 1851,
a young London warehouseman who had not long been ordained. It is
related by one of the passengers of the ship in which Mr. Taylor was
sailing that the master of the vessel had great difficulty in locating the
island, and that for three days they cruised about and saw nothing
resembling land. The third day towards evening the skipper gave up the
search and headed for the Cape. Mr. Taylor, who was gazing towards
the setting sun suddenly saw the Peak of Tristan, which is 7,640 feet
high, emerge out of the clouds. It was about ninety miles away. The
captain turned back, and his passenger was safely landed. Mr. Taylor
stayed there some five years. On his departure he induced about
forty-five of the islanders to accompany him to Cape Colony, where
they settled down.
The second clergyman, also in connection with the S.P.G., was the Rev.
E. H. Dodgson, a brother of "Lewis Carroll." He arrived in December
1880 from St. Helena, and landed in safety, but the ship was driven
ashore and he lost nearly all his clothing and books. One of the very
few things washed ashore was a small stone font, which, curiously
enough, was undamaged.
In December 1884 Mr. Dodgson, who was much out of health, got a
passage to the Cape in a man-of-war. It was not his intention to return.
But the next year a great calamity befell the Tristanites. Fifteen of their
men put off in a new lifeboat to a ship, and were all drowned. Out of a
population of ninety-two there were now only four male adults, and one
of these was out of his mind and giving a good deal of trouble. Tristan
had suddenly become an island of widows and children. When Mr.

Dodgson heard of this calamity he at once offered to return. It being
thought that the islanders were on the brink of starvation, H.M.S.
Thalia was sent to their relief, and Mr. Dodgson sailed in her, reaching
Tristan in August 1886. He remained till December 1889, when ill
health again obliged him to leave. This time ten of the inhabitants left
with him.
To go back to the period when we ourselves began to think of going out.
After some months of serious consideration we resolved to make the
attempt, and at once began to face the question of how to get there. To
get to Tristan da Cunha is no easy matter; it took us nearly five months.
There is no regular communication with it, and it has no harbour.
Formerly a man-of-war from the Cape station visited it once a year, but
since the South African War this annual visit has been discontinued. Mr.
Dodgson advised us to go to St. Helena and there await a whaler. He