History · Tristan da Cunha

Tristan da Cunha: The Remotest Settlement

A single volcanic island in the South Atlantic, more than 1,300 miles from anywhere — garrisoned by Britain to guard against a Napoleonic rescue, settled by a Scottish corporal who stayed, and evacuated whole when the volcano erupted in 1961

By Worldlore Editorial · 30 September 2026

An 1818 ink-and-wash drawing of a few small huts on a flat ledge above a waterfall, dwarfed by sheer cliffs and a volcanic peak behind
Tristan da Cunha drawn in 1818 by Midshipman C. W. Browne of the Royal Navy, from an album of sketches made from memory. A few small buildings stand on the ledge below the cliffs and the peak. (C. W. Browne, Royal Museums Greenwich / Wikimedia Commons · Public domain)

The most isolated inhabited place on Earth

Tristan da Cunha is a near-circular volcanic island about 7 miles across in the South Atlantic, some 1,350 miles from St Helena and farther still from South Africa and South America — the most remote permanently inhabited place in the world. About 220 people live there, in a single settlement with the resounding name of Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, all descended from a handful of 19th-century founders and sharing just a few surnames. There is no airstrip; access is by a six-day voyage from Cape Town. It is part of the British Overseas Territory of St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.

A short history

  1. 1506

    Discovery

    The Portuguese navigator Tristão da Cunha sights the island; no landing.

  2. 1790s–1810s

    Sealers and squatters

    Sealers use the island; in 1810 the American Jonathan Lambert and two companions settle.

  3. 1816

    The garrison

    Britain occupies the island, reportedly to forestall a rescue of Napoleon from St Helena.

  4. 1817

    Glass stays

    When the garrison leaves, Corporal William Glass and two others remain and found the community.

  5. 19th century

    Whaling and shipwrecks

    Passing ships trade; wrecked sailors and a few settlers add to the population.

  6. 1938

    Dependency status

    Tristan is formally made a dependency of St Helena.

  7. 1961

    The eruption

    A volcanic vent opens by the settlement; the whole population is evacuated to England.

  8. 1963

    The return

    After a 148–5 vote in England, most families go home.

Garrison and settlement

The uninhabited island was named for the Portuguese admiral who spotted it in 1506 but could not land in its heavy seas. Sealers worked the group from the late 18th century, and in 1810 a New Englander, Jonathan Lambert, declared himself sovereign of the "Islands of Refreshment" before drowning within two years. In 1816, with Napoleon imprisoned on St Helena, Britain annexed Tristan and stationed a small garrison — the usual explanation is that it was to deny the island to anyone plotting the emperor's escape, though guarding the sea route to India was also a motive. When the garrison was withdrawn in 1817, a Scottish corporal, William Glass, asked to stay with his family and two others; they signed an agreement to hold everything in common and share the work equally, and that egalitarian constitution shaped the community that grew from them.

Rows of low houses and green fields of the Tristan da Cunha settlement below dark volcanic cliffs
Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, the island's only settlement, on the narrow northern coastal plain. The rest of the island is steep volcanic slope rising to a permanently cloud-covered summit. (CTBTO / Wikimedia Commons)

An isolated society

Through the 19th century the population grew slowly, added to by shipwrecked sailors, a few women brought from St Helena, and Italian sailors wrecked in 1892 whose surnames (Repetto, Lavarello) are still common. The islanders lived by subsistence farming on the potato patches, fishing, gathering seabird eggs, and bartering with the whaling ships that called — but as sail gave way to steam and whaling declined, the island became more cut off, and by the early 20th century it could go without contact with the outside world for long stretches. Britain paid it little attention until the Second World War, when a naval station was established, and a crayfish (rock lobster) canning factory opened in 1949 that brought the island paid employment.

The eruption and the exile

On 10 October 1961 a volcanic vent opened on the plain immediately east of the settlement, and lava began to advance toward the houses and the cannery. The entire population — 264 people — was evacuated: first to a neighbouring island by open boat, then to Cape Town, and finally to a former RAF camp at Calshot in Hampshire, England. The "Tristan islanders" arrived to a big press reception, a small, close-knit community suddenly dropped into modern Britain. Many found it hard to adjust and longed for home. After a Royal Society expedition in 1962 found the settlement only marginally affected, the islanders voted 148 to 5 to return, and in 1963 most families went home.

A satellite image of the near-circular volcanic island of Tristan da Cunha ringed by cloud
Tristan da Cunha from orbit — a single volcano rising from the sea floor. The 1961 eruption, from a vent on the coastal plain, forced the evacuation of the entire population to England. (NASA / Wikimedia Commons)

Tristan now

Tristan da Cunha governs its local affairs through an Island Council and an Administrator who represents the Governor, and it remains determinedly communal: all land is held in common, no outsiders may buy land or settle, and every resident family farms. The economy still rests on the lobster fishery, plus the sale of stamps and coins and limited tourism. In 2020 Tristan declared a marine protection zone covering about 265,000 square miles of its waters, the largest no-take zone in the Atlantic. In May 2026 a suspected hantavirus case linked to a visiting cruise ship led a British military medical team to parachute onto the island. Its future is shadowed by its size and isolation — a shrinking, ageing population, and no easy way in or out.

What Tristan da Cunha carries

Tristan da Cunha exists because Britain garrisoned an empty rock during the Napoleonic Wars and one soldier chose to stay. The community he founded — small, equal, self-sufficient, related — has held to those principles for two centuries, and when a volcano forced it into the modern world in 1961, it looked at the alternative and chose, overwhelmingly, to go back to the remotest inhabited island on the planet.

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