Thomas Street State School And Tristan Da Cunha (1929) .
One of the subjects I enjoy researching and writing about is how children from Subiaco and the State of Western Australia engaged with other children and world around them through their education at schools and home life in the early years. Some of the ways this was done has been shared via blogposts from articles and photographs found on Trove, the database on the National Library of Australia.
It is hard to imagine that nearly one hundred years ago there were places in the world that only received mail via ships once a year. One of those places was Tristan Da Cunha, a small group of islands about 2000 miles of the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in the south Atlantic. For over nine years children at the Thomas Street State School regularly corresponded with students from the island under the supervision of teacher Mrs A. E. Robertson who later went on to become a Federal politician.
This article describing that interaction and a brief history of the islands appeared in the West Australian newspaper in 1929.
The article is from Trove, the database at the National Library of Australia. No copyright infringements intended.
West Australian, 10 August 1929.
TRISTAN DA CUNHA.
LONELY OUTPOST OF EMPIRE. Perth Children in Touch
For the last nine years children attending the Thomas-street State School have been corresponding regularly (under the supervision of one of their teachers, Mrs. A. E. Robertson) with the inhabitants of the loneliest spot in the British Empire - Tristan da Cunha, the largest of three small volcanic islands in the South Atlantic, situated 2,000 miles west of the Cape of Good Hope, and about 4,000 miles northeast of Cape Horn.
After the letters are posted, two or three years sometimes elapse before answers are received from Tristan da Cunha, where shipping rarely touches; Mrs Robertson's pupils write an average of 52 letters each year, and also forward a scrapbook full of cuttings dealing with life and progress in this State.
A chaplain schoolmaster, sent out by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, attends to the education of the settlers: last year his scholars numbered 37, one of whom was aged 26. The letters received from Tristan da Cunha indicate that the schoolmaster's services are badly needed. The correspondents, however, though their spelling is not all it might be, have undoubtedly mastered the art of simplicity and directness of expression. There are some delightfully naïve passages in their letters: for example: -
Us is very short of clothes and boots. Send me some men's clothes and boots if you can. The crop is very short. . . my mother name is Ruth, my grandfather is the oldest man on the island send me some sweets as I love them very much I am only a small man about five foot hight.
I am so please with your kind letter. I do hope that I will be in time to catch this boat as I still have to wait at least 6 or 8 months or more before we get another boat for to send our letters.
I have blue eyes and white hair good looking is the sailors said on board of the ship.
My wife is a good looking... I got one baby boy is ten months old... I got sisters and brothers, all are married sept three.
My mother died when I was quite small but now I am grown quite big and will be 21 on the 27 of September... I have got one brother married... I like him very much. There are 155 people on the island.
The oldest is a widow aged 92 and the youngest a boy of two months... We live chiefly on fish and potatoes sea birds and their eggs. We also have cattle sheep cats dogs geese and fowls.
These last few years we have been having a mail every year in February, but sometimes we go without one for a couple of years.
A Precocious Infant.
But if some of the Tristan da Cunha settlers are a trifle backward, this certainly cannot be said of all of them for was there ever a more amazing instance of childish precocity than the letter of three-months-old Edwin Glass? It would be quite, unfair to suggest that his pen was guided by an adult hand, for he does not say so and there is no direct proof that this was the case! Here is what young Edwin writes: - "Just a line to you hoping this a letter will reach you safe... I am writing to you because I don't have no one to write to me and we go fishing in little canvass boats and working a farm, a potatoes farm. Please can you right to me again. I am age three months a baby.
Edwin is too modest: there is really nothing babyish about him, despite his tender growth, because besides being an expert calligraphist he is evidently a farm worker and a fisherman. It is to be assumed that if a friend or relation had the temerity to say 'goo-goo' to him he would look down his nose with dignity.
Tristan da Cunha has had a very interesting history. The three islands of which Tristan is one were discovered by a Portuguese Admiral Tristan da Cunha, in 1506, while on a voyage to India. In 1656 Van Riebeek the founder of Cape Town, sent a ship from Table Bay to Tristan to see if it were suitable for a military station, but the absence of a harbour led to the project being abandoned. Later in the 17th century ships were sent from St. Helena by the English East India Company to Tristan to report on a proposed settlement there, but that project also came to naught.
John Patten, the master of an English merchant ship, and part of his crew, lived, on Tristan from August, 1790, to April 1791, but the first permanent, inhabitant was Thomas Currie who landed on the island in 1810. An American named Lambert, with a friend, one Williams, joined Currie soon afterwards, and Lambert declared himself sovereign and sole possessor of the three islands, "grounding my right and claim on the rational and sure ground of absolute occupancy." His occupancy , was short-lived. He and Williams were drowned while out fishing in May, 1812, and Currie was joined by two other men, and they busied themselves in growing vegetables, and wheat and oats, and in breeding pigs.
War broke out in this year between Britain and America, and the islands were used as a base by American cruisers sent to pray on British merchant ships.
On August 14, 1816, with this fact still rankling, the British Government issued a proclamation annexing the islands as dependencies of the Cape, and a garrison was maintained on Tristan until November of the following year. At their own request William Glass, a corporal of the Royal Artillery, with his wife and two children and two masons, were left behind, and thus was begun the present settlement. From time to time additional settlers arrived or shipwrecked mariners decided to remain.
In 1827 six coloured women from St. Helena were induced to migrate to Tristan to become the wives of the six bachelors then on the island. Let Robert Glass, a descendant of the founder of the settlement, relate the facts of this curious episode in his own way: - "One day when the men were digging their potatoes Mr Glass shouted mail Ho-Sail-Ho, and about 30 minutes later four boats were seen rowing towards the shore. It was Captain Ham of New Bedford, Mass., U.S.A, who came to Tristan da Cunha to buy potatoes so the new settlers who had no wives thought it was their time for to get a wife. So they made a bargain with Captain Ham if he would bring them six women from St. Helena island they would give him 120 bushels of potatoes and signed the agreement and went back to his ship and told his mate the news and his mate said Captain we have a fair wind for St. Helena island, and in 42 days he was back to Tristan da Cunha island again and had on board six girls from St. Helena for the men of Tristan.
But there was great excitement when the boat landed with the sirls on board they had to draw lots who would be first so they had to send for Mr. William Glass to settle the matter, and had to go when they landed to see everything was done fair so every man got his wife and Captain Ham got his 120 bushels of potatoes the price of the six wives. For at Tristan there are some large caves and one or two of the parties live in the caves for a few days until, they had thouse for on the island. We have no wood for building houses we have to trust to shipwrecks for wood.
Later, coloured women front Cape Colony married residents on the island. Other settlers are of Dutch. Italian and Asiatic origin; thus there is mixed blood, but the British strain greatly predominates.
From 1817 until he died in 1853 William Glass ruled over the little community in patriarchal fashion. In 1856, out of a total population of 100, 25 emigrated to America, and next year 45 removed to Cape Colony. A number of substantial stone cottages, exactly similar to the dwellings of Scottish, crofters, were constructed on a plain in the north-west of the island. The little township is known as Edinburgh, the name being given to commemorate a visit by the Duke of Edinburgh in 1867.
After the death of Glass the colony was ruled for some time by an old man-of-war's-man named Cotton, who had been for three years guard over Napoleon at St. Helena. He was succeeded by Peter Green, a native of Amsterdam. In 18S5 a disaster befell the islanders; a lifeboat, on its way to take provisions to a ship in the offing, was lost with all hands - 15 men- and only four adult males were left on the island. In 1897 the population was only 64 in 1901 it was 74; in 1909 it was 95: and today, as the letters received at Thomas-street State School it stands at 155.
On several occasions the settlers have received offers of allotments of land, in Cape Colony, but the majority have always refused to desert the island. The Tristanites are described as religious, hospitable to strangers, well-mannered and industrious, healthy and long-lived. If they were lazy, they would speedily starve, for there are no shops round the corner where the commodities of everyday life are sold, nor is there any money on the island to buy things. For a living the settlers depend on fish and potatoes, with an occasional meal of beef Map showing the position of the small island of Tristan da Cunha, in the SNth Atlantic.
The last potato crop was an utter failure, and the settlers would have suffered great hardship had it not been for the opportune arrival last February of the steamer Duchess of Atholl, which brought 25 tons of stores, clothing, etc., contributed by kindly folk in Britain and elsewhere. The steamer also brought a large harmonium (a gift from Queen Mary) and an ultra short wave wireless receiver with which the islanders now listen with ease to the programmes of London and New York.
Map showing the position of the small island of Tristan da Cunha, in the SNth Atlantic.
Children of the Thomas State School correspond regularly each year with the inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha. Here are some of the children reading replies they have received from Tristan.
