This story was originally published in our May/June 2023 issue as "Far & Away." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
On July 19, 2021, 10 days after leaving Cape Town, South Africa, the MFV Edinburgh finally sighted land. The ship had sailed west toward Rio de Janeiro, though it was never headed there. Its destination was Tristan da Cunha, an island smaller than the city of Boston that lies roughly halfway between Africa and South America, in the middle of the South Atlantic.
Tristan is an unlikely place for human life: The island is 1,750 miles from the nearest continent, and the environment is harsh. A large active volcano dominates the landscape. Only a few hundred people live in “The Settlement” — a tiny, 200-year-old community officially named Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, though nobody on the island ever calls it that — which is squeezed onto a small plain between the volcano’s steep slopes and an unforgiving sea.
Four smaller, uninhabited islands dot Tristan da Cunha’s nearby waters, all part of an archipelago that is also named Tristan da Cunha. Though Tristan is technically part of a larger British overseas territory that includes the islands St. Helena and Ascension, these lie more than a thousand miles away. Without a vessel seaworthy enough to reach the mainland, Tristanians must depend on fishing vessels like the MFV Edinburgh to bring them goods and visitors from Cape Town when the timing suits their owner’s schedule — around eight times each year.
