Edinburgh of the Seven Seas

The settlement was founded in 1816, when Britain annexed Tristan da Cunha — partly to forestall any attempt to use it as a base to rescue Napoleon from Saint Helena, 1,500 miles to the north — and stationed a garrison on the plain above the shore. When the garrison withdrew the following year, Corporal William Glass stayed on with his family and a few companions, and the community grew from there. Shipwreck survivors, a handful of New England whalers and women brought from Saint Helena joined them, producing the seven surnames the island still carries.

The village was named Edinburgh of the Seven Seas in 1867, after a visit by Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, though islanders have always called it the Settlement. Its nineteenth century was one of passing ships, whaling and self-reliance, broken by disaster: in 1885 a lifeboat carrying almost all the island's able-bodied men was lost while sailing out to trade with a passing ship; fifteen men died, leaving an island of widows.

In October 1961 the volcano erupted on the edge of the village, and the entire population was evacuated first to Nightingale, then to Cape Town and on to England. After two years at Calshot in Hampshire, most families returned in 1963; the lava of that eruption lies on the plain immediately east of the houses. Calshot Harbour, named after the camp where the islanders had been housed in England, was completed in 1967, and the crawfish fishery built after the war remains the basis of the island's income.

About 220 people live here, descended from founders who shared seven surnames — Glass, Green, Hagan, Lavarello, Repetto, Rogers and Swain — with a few more brought by English husbands after the 1960s evacuation. They speak a dialect of their own, Tristan da Cunha English, known locally as Tristanian. Society is egalitarian: all resident families farm, and all land is communally owned.

The year is structured by communal work rather than by entertainment. Farming at the Patches and the lobster fishery occupy most of the community, Ratting Day falls on a date the Chief Islander declares each year, and Anniversary Day in August marks the 1816 annexation. There is one shop, one school, one doctor, one bar and an Island Council of eight elected and three appointed members.

Two churches, Anglican and Catholic, anchor the social calendar alongside the community hall, Prince Philip Hall, home of the Albatross Bar. Hospitality to the very few visitors who arrive each year is generous and formal in its way: guests stay in islanders' houses, are expected at family meals, and are folded into whatever the village is doing. Islanders have long knitted garments from the wool of their own sheep, and the sale of the island's stamps and coins is one of its main exports.

The Settlement holds the whole population of Tristan da Cunha, about 220 people, in low houses built to withstand the wind, each with a garden and a view of either the sea or the cliffs behind. The administration building, the shop, the school, the hospital, the churches and the hall stand within a few hundred metres of one another, and the harbour lies just below.

Two things pay for the island: the crawfish fishery, the main export, and subsistence farming — potatoes in the Patches, cattle and sheep on the common grazing — supplemented by the sale of stamps and coins and by limited tourism. Government is the other main employer on the island.

Supplies come from Cape Town, six days away, on three ships that typically call fewer than a dozen times a year, so the shop's shelves rise and fall with the sailings. Power comes from generators, replaced after a 2008 fire destroyed the old ones and the fish factory, and internet access comes by satellite through an internet café and, after office hours, Wi-Fi to homes. The harbour is small and often unusable in swell, which is the fact that governs everything: when the sea is up, nothing lands, nobody leaves, and the island waits.

Potatoes are the staple, grown by the island's families at the Patches, where potato farms have been worked for over 150 years. In the nineteenth century they were even the island's only currency, and islanders offered them, with albatross eggs, to the crews of visiting ships.

The sea provides the protein. Crawfish, the rock lobster that sustains the island economy, was fished only for local eating until about 1950 and is now the main export; other fish are caught from the boats; and mutton and beef come from the island's sheep and cattle. In hard years, such as 1906, when the potato crop failed and cattle died, longboats took islanders to Inaccessible Island to gather albatrosses, shearwaters and penguins for food.

Between ships, canned and imported goods from the shop bridge the gap, and their range narrows the longer the wait. The Albatross Bar in Prince Philip Hall and the café at the post office are where people eat or drink outside a private house.