From our Collections...
This is a display of just 3 pages of postally related artefacts from one of the remotest places in the world. Tristan Da Cunha had no indigenous population of its own and remained largely uninhabited until a few English families settled there in the nineteen century, and lived in splendid isolation until a volcanic eruption forced them to evacuate in 1961.
The first cover, franked by a South African stamp, is addressed to Cape Town and was most likely picked up by a passing fishing boat on its way back to South Africa.
The second cover was not franked on the island, and was subject to Postage Due (more than once) on arrival. It is addressed to London and, as there are no South African markings, would no doubt have been picked up by one of the British Packet Ships that called once or twice a year to bring essential supplies.
The third page shows a photograph of a wooden transit box destined for the island in 1963, following the re-settlement of the islanders. Whether this could be philatelically regarded as a packet is doubtful. It is clearly addressed to the island but was unwrapped and bore no postal markings. I managed to save this box from the refuse bin when I was employed at the NIMR on The Ridgeway Mill Hill at the same time as physiological research on the re-settled islanders was still being analysed, and it has been most useful to keep my tools in under the stairs ever since. Probably worthless as postal history, but a useful social artefact and valuable to me as a reminder of how difficult the islanders found it to settle in England and how much their voluntary isolation had cost them in fitness to adapt to a modern world.
