Tristan : Historic First for Tristan Students
Submitted by Tristan Times (Juanita Brock) 27.04.2004 (Article Archived on 11.05.2004)

Students have landed on many remote places during their GAP years and at other stages during their primary and secondary education. However, some from St. Mary’s School in Edinburgh, Tristan da Cunha – itself a pretty remote place – have gone to the head of the class as far as landing on remote Islands.

Photo(c) J. Brock (SARTMA - TdC) Tristanian Students on Salt Beach, Inaccessible Island

HISTORIC FIRST FOR TRISTAN STUDENTS

By J. Brock (SARTMA – TdC)

Tristanian Students on Salt Beach, Inaccessible Island

Students have landed on many remote places during their GAP years and at other stages during their primary and secondary education.  However, some from St. Mary’s School in Edinburgh, Tristan da Cunha – itself a pretty remote place – have gone to the head of the class as far as landing on remote Islands.  Nicole Glass, Kirsty Green, Glenda Swain and Sasha Green have stepped ashore on Inaccessible Island – a place rarely visited by adults, let alone school children.  As a matter of fact, it is a first ever landing on that island by students.

Thanks to the Tristanian guides, ably lead by James Glass and M/S ENDEAVOUR staff and supernumeraries, Tom Richie, James Kelley, Magnus Forsberg, Stephen Zeff, Richard White and Steve MacLean, the students, accompanied by their teacher, Mrs. Tina Glass, a Policewoman, Lorraine Repetto, and a mother, Noleen Swain, stepped ashore on Salt Beach, just below the yellow scientific hut. 

Besides the students, this was the estimated third landing by tourists and a first for M/S ENDEAVOUR passengers, who came from Britain, the United States and Germany.  Those tourists had come to the island to photograph the Inaccessible Island Rail – a flightless bird endemic to that island only.

Prior to their landing on Inaccessible Island, the four students spent the morning on Nightingale Island, where they viewed first hand the damage caused by the May 21, 2001 hurricane.  They visited the sheds that were used to house people doing scientific studies and took note of those sheds used by their families during trips to Nightingale Island in previous years.

Thanks goes to the crew of the M/S ENDEAVOUR, under the Captainship of Joachim Saeterskog, for a truly monumental day on the 17^th of March 2004.  It’s gone in the Tristan history book!

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