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Tristan da Cunha (), colloquially Tristan, is a remote group of volcanic islands in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is the most remote inhabited archipelago in the world, lying approximately 2,787 kilometres (1,732 mi) from Cape Town in South Africa, 2,437 kilometres (1,514 mi) from Saint Helena, 3,949 kilometres (2,454 mi) from Mar del Plata in Argentina, South America and 4,002 kilometres (2,487 mi) from the Falkland Islands. The territory consists of the inhabited island, Tristan da Cunha, which has a diameter of roughly 11 kilometres (6.8 mi) and an area of 98 square kilometres (38 sq mi); the wildlife reserves of Gough Island and Inaccessible Island; and the smaller, uninhabited Nightingale Islands. As of October 2018, the main island has 250 permanent inhabitants, who all carry British Overseas Territories citizenship. The other islands are uninhabited, except for the South African personnel of a weather station on Gough Island. Tristan da Cunha is one of three constituent parts of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, with its own constitution. There is no airstrip on the main island; the only way of travelling in and out of Tristan is by ship, a six-day trip from South Africa. History Discovery The uninhabited islands were first recorded as sighted in 1506 by Portuguese explorer Tristão da Cunha, though rough seas prevented a landing. He named the main island after himself, Ilha de Tristão da Cunha. It was later anglicised from its earliest mention on British Admiralty charts to Tristan da Cunha Island. Some sources state that the Portuguese made the first landing in 1520, when the Lás Rafael captained by Ruy Vaz Pereira called at Tristan for water. The first undisputed landing was made on 7 February 1643 by the crew of the Dutch East India Company ship Heemstede, captained by Claes Gerritsz Bierenbroodspot. The Dutch stopped at the island four more times in the next 25 years, and in 1656 created the first rough charts of the archipelago. The first full survey of the archipelago was made by the crew of the French corvette Heure du Berger in 1767. The first scientific exploration was conducted by French naturalist Louis-Marie Aubert du Petit-Thouars, who stayed on the island for three days in January 1793, during a French mercantile expedition from Brest, France to Mauritius. Thouars made botanical collections and reported traces of human habitation, including fireplaces and overgrown gardens, probably left by Dutch explorers in the 17th century. On his voyage out from Europe to East Africa and India in command of the Imperial Asiatic Company of Trieste and Antwerp ship, Joseph et Therese, William Bolts sighted Tristan da Cunha, put a landing party ashore on 2 February 1777 and hoisted the Imperial flag, naming it and its neighbouring islets the Isles de Brabant. However, no settlement or facilities were ever set up there by the company. After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War halted penal transportation to the Thirteen Colonies, British prisons started to overcrowd. As several stopgap measures proved to be ineffective, the British Government announced in December 1785 that it would proceed with the settlement of New South Wales. In September 1786 Alexander Dalrymple, presumably goaded by Bolts's actions, published a pamphlet with an alternative proposal of his own for settlements on Tristan da Cunha, St. Paul and Amsterdam islands in the Southern Ocean. Captain John Blankett, R.N., also suggested independently to his superiors in August 1786 that convicts be used to establish a British settlement on Tristan. In consequence, the Admiralty received orders from the government in October 1789 to examine the island as part of a general survey of the South Atlantic and the coasts of southern Africa. That did not happen, but an investigation of Tristan, Amsterdam and St. Paul was undertaken in December 1792 and January 1793 by George Macartney, Britain's first ambassador to China. During his voyage to China, he established that none of the islands were suitable for settlement. 19th century The first permanent settler was Jonathan Lambert of Salem, Massachusetts, United States, who moved to the island in December 1810 with two other men, to be joined later by a fourth. Lambert publicly declared the islands his property and named them the Islands of Refreshment. Three of the four men died in 1812 and Thomas Currie (Tommaso Corri, from Livorno, Italy), one of the original three, remained as a farmer on the island. On 14 August 1816, the United Kingdom annexed the islands by sending a garrison to secure possession, and making them a dependency of the Cape Colony in South Africa. This was explained as a measure to prevent the islands' use as a base for any attempt to free Napoleon Bonaparte from his prison on Saint Helena. The occupation also prevented the United States from using Tristan da Cunha as a base for naval cruisers, as it had during the War of 1812. The garrison left the islands in November 1817, although some members of the garrison, notably William Glass, stayed and formed the nucleus of a permanent population. The islands were occupied by a garrison of British Marines, and a civilian population gradually grew. Berwick stopped there on 25 March 1824 and reported that it had a population of twenty-two men and three women. The barque South Australia stayed there on 18–20 February 1836 when a certain Glass was Governor, as reported in a chapter on the island by W. H. Leigh. Whalers set up bases on the islands for operations in the Southern Atlantic. However, the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, together with the gradual transition from sailing ships to coal-fired steam ships, increased the isolation of the islands, which were no longer needed as a stopping port for lengthy sail voyages, or for shelter for journeys from Europe to East Asia. A parson arrived in February 1851, the Bishop of Cape Town visited in March 1856 and the island was included within the diocese of Cape Town.: 63–50  In 1836, the schooner Emily ran aground with the Dutch fisherman Pieter Groen from Katwijk. He stayed, married there, changed his name to Peter Green and in 1865 became spokesman/governor of the community. In 1856, there were already 97 people living there. In 1867, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh and second son of Queen Victoria, visited the islands. The only settlement, Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, was named in honour of his visit. On 15 October 1873, the Royal Navy scientific survey vessel HMS Challenger docked at Tristan to conduct geographic and zoological surveys on Tristan, Inaccessible Island and the Nightingale Islands. In his log, Captain George Nares recorded a total of fifteen families and eighty-six individuals living on the island. Tristan became a dependency of the British Crown in October 1875. On 27 November 1885, the island suffered one of its worst tragedies after an iron barque named West.... Discover the Tristan Lewis popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Tristan Lewis books.