page_title: History of Tristan da Cunha
section_title: 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: History of Tristan da Cunha / 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A 1938 stamp of Saint Helena overprinted for use in Tristan da Cunha from 1952.
context_page_description: Tristan da Cunha is part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha and has a history going back to the beginning of the 16th century. It was settled by men from military garrisons and ships, who married native women from Saint Helena and the Cape Colony. Its people are multi-racial, descended from European male founders and mixed-race and African women founders.
context_section_description: In 1906 the islanders passed through a period of distress owing to great mortality among the cattle and the almost total failure of the potato crop. The majority again refused, however, to desert the island, though offered allotments of land in Cape Colony. Similar proposals were made and declined several times since the question was first mooted in 1886.
  A series of Anglican missionaries served the island parish: Rev. J. G. Barrow and his wife Katherine (1906–1909), Rev. H. M. Rogers and his wife Rose Annie (1922–1925), Rev. R. A. C. Pooley (1927–1929), Rev. A. G. Partridge (1929–1932), Rev. Harold Wilde (1934–1940).
  On 12 January 1938, by Letters Patent, the islands were declared a dependency of Saint Helena. Prior to this, passing ships stopped irregularly at the island for a period of mere hours.
  During World War II, the islands were used as a top secret Royal Navy weather and radio station codenamed HMS Atlantic Isle, to monitor U Boats (which needed to surface to maintain radio contact) and German shipping movements in the South Atlantic Ocean. The only currency in use on the island at this time was the potato, and islanders labouring to construct the station were paid in kind with naval supplies for their own use, such as wood, paint and tea. Money was introduced the following year, as was the island's first newspaper, The Tristan Times. The first Administrator, Surgeon Lieutenant Commander E.J.S. Woolley, was appointed by the British government during this time.
  The second Duke of Edinburgh, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II, visited the islands in 1957 as part of a world tour on board the royal yacht Britannia.
  In 1958 as part of an experiment, Operation Argus, the United States Navy detonated an atomic bomb 160 kilometres (100 mi) high in the upper atmosphere about 175 kilometres (109 mi) southeast of the main island.
  The 1961 eruption of Queen Mary's Peak forced the evacuation of the entire population via Cape Town to wooden huts in the disused Pendell Army Camp in Merstham, Surrey, England, before moving to a more permanent site at a former Royal Air Force station in Calshot near Southampton, England, living mainly in a road called Tristan Close. In 1962, a Royal Society expedition went to the islands to assess the damage, and reported that the settlement Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had been only marginally affected. Most families returned in 1963 led by Willie Repetto (head of the ten-person island council) and Allan Crawford (the former island welfare officer).
caption: A 1938 stamp of Saint Helena overprinted for use in Tristan da Cunha from 1952.
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