Tristan da Cunha - Edinburgh of the Seven Seas

Tristan da Cunha is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The main island lies 37° south and 12° west of Greenwich, just north of the “Roaring Forties”. For practical purposes this puts it about half way between Uruguay and South Africa and some 2800 kilometres west of Cape Town.

The other main islands in the Tristan group are Inaccessible, Nightingale and Gough Islands. Inaccessible and Nightingale lie about 25 kilometres south of Tristan da Cunha main island and are uninhabited. Gough Island is 350 kilometres to the southeast.

Gough and Inaccessible are World Heritage Sites and may not be visited without special permission from the Tristan Government, which will not normally be forthcoming.

Tristan itself is dominated by a large volcanic peak of over 2000 metres and surrounded by cliffs up to 700 metres high, rising straight out of the sea. The island is located over a volcanic ‘hot spot’ and the population was evacuated to the UK in 1961/3 following an eruption close to the Settlement. There was a spate of earth tremors in July/August 2004.

The island is roughly circular with a diameter of about 10 kilometres. The total land area is some 78 square kilometres, but only about 5 square kilometres is habitable and used for grazing cattle and sheep and growing crops, mostly potatoes.

The permanent population of Tristan is currently 263 islanders plus up to 12 expatriates of different nationalities, all of whom live in Edinburgh of the Seven Seas (known to residents as “the Settlement”) on the north west coastal plain, one of only two on the Island as, for the most part, the Peak and its surrounding base drops precipitously into the sea.