Imagine being told to leave your home right now. No time to pack much. No idea when you can come back. That’s what happened to 264 people on Tristan da Cunha in 1961. According to a Royal Society article by archivist Jon Bushell, the island’s volcano began to stir that August. By October, everyone had to go, and the farm animals were left behind. A few months later, scientists reached the island and found better news than they had feared.
A remote island starts to shake
Tristan da Cunha is a small group of islands in the South Atlantic. You can’t fly there, and it’s a six-day sail from the nearest port. Its main village, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, had a population of 264 in 1961. The first local earth tremors were felt in August. They became more frequent and more intense through the month of September. By early October, a massive lava dome had formed a few hundred feet east of the village. Residents decided to leave. They sailed south to Nightingale Island by boat. They were rescued by a Dutch ship that was due in the next morning. By early November, the entire population was safely in England, with no idea when they could return home.
Scientists go south to check
Not long after the islanders reached England, the Royal Society authorized an expedition. The purpose was to study the volcano, the local geology, and how the eruption had affected nature on Tristan. A team of 12, led by Ian Gass, arrived in late January 1962. It had four geologists, a botanist, a zoologist, a meteorologist, and an agriculturist. With them went two officers of the Royal Navy and two islanders as guides. They had only seven weeks. What they found was a relief. The volcano had caused less damage than feared. Lava flowed north and east of the settlement and into the sea. Most of the settlement was undamaged, although the canning factory was destroyed.
The cattle that carried on
The farm animals and pets left behind survived in large numbers. The team counted some 200 cattle on the plains near the settlement, and several large herds were thriving elsewhere on the island. That was only months after the islanders had left, and the herds were untended. For the community, that was a hopeful sign. For the island’s wildlife, it was a worry.
Not everyone welcomed the thriving herds. In a 1962 paper published in the journal Oryx, H. F. I. Elliott wrote that cattle, sheep, donkeys, geese and fowls were left behind in Tristan da Cunha. He warned that rats, feral cats and abandoned livestock could threaten the islands’ wildlife. Damage to the habitat was likely to increase unless some control measures were found.
How the story ended
The results of the expedition were encouraging. Based on them, a small resettlement party returned to the island in September 1962 to start the task of cleaning up and repairing the village. By 1963, most of the islanders who had been displaced had returned home. The first group arrived in April, and about 200 more followed in November. When the team left, the volcano was still showing signs of life, with gases and vapor steaming out of the crater. But its activity was clearly waning, and another major eruption seemed unlikely. For the islanders, the key reassurance was that it was safe to return home. Their community lived away from home for roughly two years, and the herds they left behind kept going.
