
Take Nothing, Leave Nothing: On being banned from the world’s most remote island - Thevet
http://laphamsquarterly.org/travel/take-nothing-leave-nothing
======
greggyb
This excerpt is truly one of the best things I've read recently:

> It stems from a somewhat bizarre British government decision, taken during
> World War II, to reclassify some of its more remote island possessions as
> ships. Tristan was transmuted into HMS Atlantic Isle, and its role was to
> patrol (from its rock-hewn state of immobility) for any German U-boats that
> might be lurking in the southern Atlantic. To compound the fantasy a small
> party of sailors was posted there to man the ship

~~~
emmelaich
Referring to land bases as HMS dates from 1805.

    
    
       https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_frigate
    

Which doesn't negate the reason for this particular decision of course.

~~~
cperciva
My grandfather once told me the story of a Nazi propaganda broadcast which
attempted to damage British morale by (falsely) announcing the sinking of a
"ship", only to backfire when they used the name of a stone frigate.

Unfortunately I can't find any reference online, so the story may be
apocryphal; has anyone else heard this?

~~~
funkyy
How would this backfire? -by revealing the truth to soldiers in propaganda
controlled media? -by not allowing for fake news to enter news circulation in
Britain? -or maybe to try to uncover the truth in state owned German
newspapers?

I don't see any field for backfiring.

~~~
Crito
By making the Germans seem ridiculous to the British, rather than demoralizing
the British.

------
ceequof
The British Empire also holds a similar tiny island in the Pacific: Pitcairn,
population 67, inhabited by the descendants of the Mutiny on the Bounty:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutiny_on_the_Bounty)

It is mainly notable for a contentious rape trial in 2004:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_sexual_assault_trial_o...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_sexual_assault_trial_of_2004)

Long form Vanity Fair article, which is sufficiently similar to the OP that at
first I thought I was rereading the same essay:
[http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/01/pitcairn200801](http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2008/01/pitcairn200801)

~~~
apaprocki
On the slightly larger side, I was able to visit Easter Island at one point.
Depletion of natural resources led to an all out class war that nearly wiped
everyone out (see: the popular 'Collapse' (2005)). It is a very eerie place to
visit because there is not much vegetation across large parts of the island
and you can see the the extent of the island in all directions standing on one
of the peaks. I couldn't really put my finger on it at the time but I
definitely had an uneasy feeling being in such a remote location in the middle
of the vast ocean. It hits you in the gut that you would be trapped on this
tiny speck of land if it were not for the occasional airplane or cargo ship. I
can only imagine what crew of the Bounty (or any other shipwreck) felt.

~~~
typish
It's a similar isolating feeling on Pitcairn. There's no air access so I
arrived via a two day boat trip from Mangareva. Once there my boat left
leaving me with no way off for the time I was there until another arrived to
pick me up. You become very aware of how problematic a medical emergency would
be.

For an example of such, here's one travellers tale of their medical evac from
Pitcairn: [http://jimmyaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2010/09/life-and-
dea...](http://jimmyaroundtheworld.blogspot.com/2010/09/life-and-death-on-
pitcairn.html)

~~~
Ended
A great read, thanks. Incredible that he survived that fall.

------
ggchappell
I looked into the quote from Pascal. It turns out to be from his "Pensées"
(Thoughts). In the original French, the passage in question reads:

> Quand je m'y suis mis quelquefois à considérer les diverses agitations des
> hommes, et les périls, et les peines où ils s'exposent dans la Cour, dans la
> guerre d'où naissent tant de querelles, de passions, d'entreprises hardies
> et souvent mauvaises, etc., j'ai dit souvent que tout le malheur des hommes
> vient d'une seule chose, qui est de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans une
> chambre.

One English translation
([http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/pascal/pensees-...](http://oregonstate.edu/instruct/phl302/texts/pascal/pensees-
contents.html)) renders this as follows:

> When I have occasionally set myself to consider the different distractions
> of men, the pains and perils to which they expose themselves at court or in
> war, whence arise so many quarrels, passions, bold and often bad ventures,
> etc., I have discovered that all the unhappiness of men arises from one
> single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber.

I think _I_ would translate that last bit as "... I have often said that all
the unhappiness of men derives from just one thing: not knowing how to sit
still in a room."

~~~
kweks
It's a lot more subtle than that. | "de ne savoir pas demeurer en repos dans
une chambre."

Is literally: "To not know how to remain at rest in a room"

There is certainly no mention of one's own room, but it is a conclusion one
could draw from the previous paragraph: these issues would certainly be
avoided if one did not leave their house, but without additional context, it's
not the only conclusion.

From the given context, my interpretation is closer to its literal core:
people cannot content themselves to be still, in a state of calm.

People routinely and actively flee moments of calm, moments of idle. Glance
around public transport, and you'll see people cramming every second with
something - the ageless inability to remain calm in a room.

------
ars
If you don't feel like reading the article, he was banned because he wrote a
book exposing some private details of the lives of two residents.

He was OK with it because the details were publicly available, but not easy to
access. The residents were not happy about it.

He feels bad about it, and won't fight it even though he would win.

He concludes by asking tourists to try to have a greater feeling for the
people you visit.

~~~
Dylan16807
I wouldn't use the word exposing for something that was already in a book and
known by enough people to be an annoyance.

I also wouldn't use the phrase private details for "she talked with some guy
one night, nothing ever came of it".

~~~
vacri
There may be more to the story than the innocent "nothing came of this" that
the protagonist originally wrote.

~~~
Dylan16807
But if there was, it was explicitly not in the book. And the article author
couldn't have published anything about that because he wouldn't know.

So the worst case is he republished an innocent story about someone that also
had a non-innocent story. That doesn't make sense for a ban.

------
jredwards
The author seems to come to grips with the islanders' scorn, and apparently
agrees that it was improper of him to retell this story.

...which he is retelling again in this article.

I'm a little confused about the true depths of his contrition.

~~~
thieving_magpie
The purpose of telling the story the first time was for selfish reasons. The
purpose of retelling the story now is for selfless reasons.

I'm betting he thinks the islanders can tell the difference.

~~~
yellowapple
That, or since he's already banned, he has nothing to lose.

~~~
betenoire
He didn't think he had anything to lose the first time, either.

------
benbreen
Related - an article I wrote about the settlement of Tristan da Cunha and the
history of micronations last year. [1] There are also some fascinating clips
of the island on Youtube (including the odd, 19th century sounding variant of
British English spoken there) if anyone is looking for interesting
procrastination material. [2]

[1] [http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/the-king-of-the-
islands...](http://theappendix.net/issues/2014/7/the-king-of-the-islands-of-
refreshment)

[2] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKRvtk-
GI0g](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKRvtk-GI0g)

~~~
IndianAstronaut
The level of inbreeding on that island is quite scary. Although if they purged
a lot of the deleterious alleles from the population, if they outbred with
others, they could produce much healthier offspring and a lower likelihood of
various genetic ailments.

~~~
formulaT
Why do you think you have such certain knowledge of these things? It seems
like knowledge of human genetics and diseases is in a very early stage. As far
as I can tell the idea that inbreeding is bad is primarily political.

~~~
mikeash
The action of recessive genes is well understood, as are various diseases
caused by them.

Don't forget that European royalty conducted a long-running experiment on the
effects of inbreeding, and the result was a great deal of deformities and
disabilities. A whole genetic disorder is named this way: just look up
"Habsburg jaw." Lots of other experiments on human inbreeding have been run on
islands like the one in the story.

Your post sounds an awful lot like, "I don't understand, therefore it is not
understood."

~~~
formulaT
More like no one would ever write about the need for Jews to _outbreed_ , and
if they did they would be rebuffed with a bazillion qualifications about the
science being uncertain. You only get to make sweeping statements when
politics are on your side.

~~~
mikeash
The Jews are several orders of magnitude more numerous than these small island
populations, and even then there are genetic diseases that are far more common
among them.

~~~
formulaT
So since the science of recessive genes is so well understood, how big does
the population need to be before scientists instruct the group to start
outbreeding?

~~~
mikeash
Scientists typically don't outright instruct, but merely describe the
consequences of various options. Sometimes (e.g. with global warming and the
"keep dumping massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere" option) the
consequences are "lots of people die horribly." But outright instructions are
typically left up to the nice men with large guns.

~~~
formulaT
My point was that the quantity of the effect matters. If the science can't
quantify how bad having a population of 150 is, then we can't say we
understand things well enough to recommend "outbreeding", as the original post
did.

~~~
mikeash
Why do you think it can't be quantified?

~~~
formulaT
Let me put it another way: Can you or anyone else provide scientific studies
that would directly back the claim

 _The level of inbreeding on that island is quite scary. Although if they
purged a lot of the deleterious alleles from the population, if they outbred
with others, they could produce much healthier offspring and a lower
likelihood of various genetic ailments._

And not the general statements that have been made in this thread, but
something that would pin down a specific numeric relationship between
population size in humans, and health.

EDIT: and for reference, the prevalence of Asthma may be purely due to the
founder effect, not an effect of inbreeding per se. Two or three of the
original settlers suffered from asthma[0].

[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1974....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2222.1974.tb01373.x/pdf)

~~~
defen
[http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6717/abs/397344a0...](http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v397/n6717/abs/397344a0.html)

Rougly 1.5 new deleterious mutations per diploid genome per generation. If you
have closely related individuals having children, there is a greater chance
that the deleterious mutations will overlap.

~~~
formulaT
But the question is how the population size relates to health, which you
haven't answered here. You have numbers for the number of deleterious
mutations, but that doesn't directly give a quantitative relationship between
population size and health.

~~~
defen
It's because your question isn't really properly formed. What do you mean by
"health"? The chance of a person having a really shitty genetic disorder? The
fitness cost of inbreeding as a function of coefficient of relationship? The
probability that a bottlenecked population will go to zero due to harmful
mutations, as a function of the bottleneck size?

~~~
formulaT
I would be interested in seeing _any_ of these quantified. And I'm not asking
for people to educate me, but rather for people to take a more careful look at
which claims can be directly justified by the science, vs which claims are
assertions made based on extrapolating from very different data.

The claim was that the population size of Tristan da Cunha is problematic. I
still haven't seen any direct evidence presented of this fact.

~~~
Udo
_> The claim was that the population size of Tristan da Cunha is problematic.
I still haven't seen any direct evidence presented of this fact._

You linked to an article about the higher incidence of asthma on that island
yourself (above), and the reason why the number of individuals is so high
directly traces to the islanders' gene pool.

However, I wouldn't say the population size is unsustainable. They _are_ more
likely to be decimated by a random disease or, over generations, by a shared
mutation. But the population is not nonviable. The issue is more that, to the
modern humanitarian mind, they will have to deal with more ill effects due to
the genetic monoculture.

------
numair
_The Microsoft billionaire who arrived on Namibia’s Skeleton Coast with five
helicopters full of bodyguards, and demanded that all available local lions be
collected in one oasis so that he could see and picture them._

Obnoxious and disgusting.

~~~
chengiz
Who would that be? Not Gates surely.

~~~
zzleeper
paul allen

~~~
kenrikm
I would have guessed Balmer.

~~~
dunk010
Paul Allen is well known to have one of the largest super-yachts in the world.
I'm not sure Ballmer even has one.

------
jacquesm
Tourism is a double edged sword. Large chunks of the world with _very_ fragile
eco-systems, sometimes the last few of a species depend on the tourists for
their income. But tourists don't have quotas and too many of them destroy the
thing they seek to find. It's a delicate balance. Kudos to mr. Winchester for
realizing that all by himself on that boat, it's a hard realization that the
best tourists are the ones that you can't see.

~~~
chetanahuja
Case in point, Maldives:

"Maldives island swamped by rising tide of waste"

[http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/29399966-e80b-11e4-9960-00144feab7...](http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/29399966-e80b-11e4-9960-00144feab7de.html)

It's one of the most beautiful places on earth that you must visit to truly
appreciate. But each extra person generates a load on that fragile ecosystem
that diminishes that beauty by a little bit.

------
greggman
I had a hard time getting the point of this article at the end about why he
shouldn't have written the original story. Anyone have an insight or some
other way to get that point across?

All I can imagine is the guy who didn't want the story told was upset because
it reminded him his wife was longing for that other guy but otherwise it's
really hard (as a dumb american) for me to understand why that story would bug
anyone. And it's certainly hard for me to understand why the author would get
banned by the island rather than just hated by the guy who brought up his
wife's innocent history.

I loved the article. Well written and certainly compelling to read and
fascinating all the way through. I'm just wondering what I missed or some
other way to see it and truly grok it.

~~~
hvidgaard
It was the revalation that what he, and evidently you, think is innocent, is
not de facto true. It was not innocent to them, and he realized that he was
warned of this but didn't respect it.

It illustrates a great point about freedom of speech: You are free to say what
you want, but that does not mean it's without consequences.

~~~
jmharvey
Free speech means that even though your speech can have consequences, but
those consequences can't come from the government, as was the case here.

~~~
lmm
It doesn't, or at least it shouldn't. It doesn't make any difference whether
it's a government, a corporation, or an individual who's stopping you
speaking. The first amendment only applies to the government, but the first
amendment is only one part of free speech.

~~~
unionpivo
I disagree. It makes big difference weather its government or somebody else.

Government has too much power(guns) so it must be checked, and strict rules on
what they can and can't do established.

On the other hand private entities, should be allowed to say for them self
what you can or can't do with their equipment (work PC's, phones) and on their
premises (digital and physical: homes, offices, blogs, forums, ... ). This is
fundamental for private ownership to have any meaning.

And if you don't like rules that this private entity has established you can
go elsewhere. (anti monopoly law's should ensure you have that option ; but
they are not always perfect or applied)

So freedom of speech should only apply to governments.

~~~
lmm
In practice these days we have a lot more choice of government (there are
dozens of reasonable countries you can move to without changing your lifestyle
too much) than of particular corporations (avoiding apple, google and
microsoft would involve substantial changes to most people's lifes).

Ownership doesn't have to be absolute to have meaning. You've always been
forbidden from using your property in illegal ways (e.g. just because you own
a knife doesn't mean you have the right to stab someone with it; just because
you own a field doesn't mean you're allowed to bury toxic waste there).

------
pp19dd
I've been fascinated by this island for the past 10 years now. It was an
isolated community where you could study its composition in an entirety of its
isolation. The island has charming place-names such as "Ridge where the Goat
jump off" and "Down where the Minister land his things." The island's official
website, tristandc, is put together by the villagers themselves. Thus I
wondered, where do they get their electricity from?

So, I corresponded with the island's administrator (who, along with the
village's doctor, is from England - only 'foreigners' or outlanders allowed on
the island.) The only outlanders who are permanently allowed on the island are
anyone who's been shipwrecked, which is how there are two Italian families
there now (or is it one?) He explained that there's a crayfish factory owned
by a South African company on the island that employs roughly half of the
villagers. The factory is powered by diesel generators and for their exclusive
deal with the islanders, the generators power the village.

The other half of the employed villagers work "for the government." He didn't
really expand on that point, but I took that to mean that part of the jobs are
the make-work kind. Because of the harsh climate, the dominant food is the
potato and the administrator, Mike Hadley, told me many of the dishes are
potato based. The villagers drink an ungodly amount of alcohol per capita, and
every year they crew boats to the nearby Gough island where they collect bird
eggs for eating. Rest of their supplies are shipped once or twice per year, so
saying that they buy in bulk is an understatement.

The islanders are very shy and self-aware of what's perceived as their
backwardness. But they appear to be rather charming, in their own way. Whale
oil trade made the remote island attractive for resupplying whaling ships, but
after the industry's collapse the islanders got cut off. Their genetic pool
got cut in half after a single boat capsized and men were lost in a storm.
Their speech patterns, fashion and culture lagged behind the times- almost
literally by centuries. Their reconnection to modernity happened after the
volcano erupted post WWII, and the islanders were evacuated to London for a
couple of years. And now, they let tourists on for a few hours and charge a
steep fee for a visa stamp.

The island is in middle of nowhere. You really have to pull up a map and
slowly zoom out until it sinks in that they're basically living on a desolate
volcano: [https://goo.gl/maps/CTLn9](https://goo.gl/maps/CTLn9)

But for all its remoteness, the island "caught" a floating oil platform back
in the mid-2000s with all its serial numbers filed off, and claimed salvage
rights. And of course, at the time I wanted to move to the island and bring
them wind turbines.

------
Peroni
>the women knit large woolen sweaters called “ganzeys,”

Now that's fascinating. 'Ganzey' is a perfect phonetic pronunciation of the
Irish word for sweater which is 'geansaí'.

~~~
seszett
That's just a an evolution of the pronunciation of "Guernsey"[0]. I'm not sure
how they say it but it doesn't sound very far from the original to me (and the
Irish doesn't seem very different either).

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey_(clothing)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guernsey_\(clothing\))

~~~
Peroni
Ah, TIL. I had no idea. Thanks for that.

------
rodgerd
As an aside, Winchester's books on the development of the Oxford English
Dictionary are wonderful, especially "The Surgeon of Crowthorne".

~~~
moioci
I highly recommend "Krakatoa."

------
tatterdemalion
I finished this article thinking it must be fiction. I had heard of an island
in the Atlantic called Tristan da Cunha, and I figured the general outline was
similar to what the article says, but the way the more and more unusual
details of the story accumulate makes it read beautifully like someone trying
to pull your leg. Amazing that it seems to be true.

------
damian2000
His book, Outposts, is a really decent read. Not as good as his original
bestseller, The Surgeon of Crowthorne though.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outposts:_Journeys_to_the_Survi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outposts:_Journeys_to_the_Surviving_Relics_of_the_British_Empire)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surgeon_of_Crowthorne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Surgeon_of_Crowthorne)

------
MattyRad
Personally I think the first half of the article was fantastic, then it
tapered off toward the end. But ultimately, my takeaway is that we should be
more considerate in all aspects of our lives about how our actions affect
others, which is a good resolution, even if the moral of the article was a bit
muddled by the end.

------
Schwolop
I recently wrote a highly upvoted comment
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444578](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444578))
on another thread whose parent article discussed why people rarely read much
any more. I railed against authors who overly enjoy the sound of their own
words.

As a follow-up I'd like to point out that this article kept me riveted right
through. It was interesting, intriguing, and written without the multitude of
irrelevant tone-setting sentences that plague so many so-called "long-form"
articles today.

In my humble opinion, well worth a read!

~~~
toolz
I'm sure your reasons are just as valid as my own for forming an opinion, but
I've always wondered if the people who enjoy reading because of the linguistic
qualities, rather than the content, are really just spending too much time
looking for ways to feel superior. Then again, maybe I'm being critical in an
attempt to feel superior. Who knows and/or who cares I guess.

~~~
shiro
Excerpt from Stephen King's "Hearts in Atlantis":

[After talking on the books with good story but not good writing, and the ones
with good writing but not good story] "Read sometimes for the story, Bobby.
Don't be like the book-snobs who won't do that. Read sometimes for the words
---the language. Don't be like the play-it-safers that won't do that. But when
you find a book that has both a good story and good words, treasure that
book."

------
unexistance
heh this island reminds me of Odd John's island before they supposedly self-
destruct

