Tristan da Cunha Families

Tristan da Cunha's Population History

Compiled by Peter Millington

The following charts show the change over time in the historical population of Tristan da Cunha plotted using data from the database of historical records tabulated at the bottom of this page.

Only permanent residents of Tristan da Cunha included in these statistics. It excludes transient expatriate personnel and their families, visitors and castaways from shipwrecks. They do include people in the early days who intended to settle permanently but who in fact soon departed.

Ongoing changes in population since 2015 can be found on our regularly updated Population Update page, whose charts also indicate islanders temporarily overseas, and expatriates and their families.

Observations

But for three setbacks, Tristan da Cunha's population grew at a relatively steady rate from the date of initial settlement until around 1980. The three setbacks were:

1. The reduction of the population by nearly three quarters following the emigration of the Glass family in 1856 and of a further 47 islanders who departed with the Rev. W.F.Taylor in 1857.
2. The loss of menfolk in the West Riding lifeboat disaster of 1885 and subsequent departure of about half of the remaining population.
3. A slight reduction following the volcanic eruption of October 1961 when some of the evacuated population chose to remain overseas.

The population seems to have peaked around 1990 and then gone into a steady and continuing decline.

The Scatter Chart reveals the relative sparsity of data from the 1940s & 50s and from the late 1960s to 2005.

Previous Work

It was usual up until World War II for the captains of visiting ships, resident missionaries and people corresponding with the island (notably Douglas Gane) to give the then size of Tristan's population in official reports and newspapers. Consequently, the statistics for this period are fairly good. Derek Roberts published a graph showing the growth of the island population in his article on "The Demography of Tristan da Cunha" in 1971. The graph left is the version updated to 1975 that he published in 1979. As far as I know at the time of writing, no one has published updated charts since. This page attempts to regenerate and update Roberts' graphs afresh using a new database compiled from primary sources and trusted secondary sources.

Left: Roberts' 1979 chart of Tristan's population growth

Principal Data Sources

Several authors have compiled lists of historical population data, not all of which were available to Roberts. These are the principal sources I have used here:

T.H.Tizard et al's "Narrative of the cruise of HMS Challenger"

This source includes a table of population statistics reported by twelve ships that visited Tristan from 1817 to 1875. Unfortunately, only years are given rather than specific visit dates, but source references are included.

Professor Arnoldo Faustini's "Annals of Tristan da Cunha"

Compiled by the Italian polar explorer, Faustini enumerates information about Tristan from the year of its discovery (1506) until 1925, although with a gap for 1910-1919. The Annals remained in manuscript until they were translated by his daughter Liz Lysven, and published online by Larry Conrad and Paul Carroll in 1999. Although Faustini does not cite references for his sources, he does give names of visiting ships and their captains, or the names of the people providing the population figures, and they are therefore generally believed to be reliable.

Jan Brander's book "Tristan da Cunha 1506-1902"

The Dutch historian (1879-1964), having already published a book about Jan Mayan Island became interested in Tristan da Cunha after having read about the Dutch founding father Pieter Groen (later anglicised to Peter Green). His thorough research, published in 1940, included copious quotations from official and primary sources such as the British Parliament's series of "Blue Books" containing official correspondence relating to the island. He also included a detailed census dated April 1902.

Arne Zettersten's monograph on "The English of Tristan da Cunha"

This Swedish linguist includes a table of population data on page 23 (Table 4). Unfortunately, he only provides references for two of his figures, and his dates are years only.

Richard Grundy & Neil Robson's book "Nothing Can Stop Us"

This is the authoritative source of statistics for various dates during the 1961 volcanic evacuation and subsequent piecemeal resettlement.

Tristan da Cunha Website

The island's official website and its archived home pages in the Internet Archive have hosted authoritative population data since 2005. The statistics are maintained by Cynthia Green, the Administrator's secretary who updates the figures every time a ship arrives or departs. As there are so many data points, intermediate records where the population has not changed are omitted from these charts.

Miscellaneous Individual Sources

Observant readers may have noticed that none of the above sources cover the forty-year period from the mid-1960s to 2005. There are also a number of other gaps - the years of the lost pages of Faustini's manuscript, and much of the 1940s and 1950s. These gaps have been partially filled from several dozen individual sources such as articles in newspapers and academic journals, listed in the table at the bottom of this page. These often only give the population for one specific date or year.

Other Sources

Marilyn Crawford's book "Tristan da Cunha 'Big Book'"

This source has not been used (so far), other than to help verify dates. It is the authoritative source of Tristan family history information. Although it may be possible to calculate changes in population following births and deaths, it is sometimes difficult to tell if and when islanders have emigrated permanently, especially in the 19th century.

Accuracy and Duplication Issues

• While population figures may be accurate for the date they were compiled, they may naturally become out of date within a matter of days due to ongoing births, deaths and to a lesser extent migration.
• Until the 1940s, population figures were reported by visiting ships, resident missionaries, and in occasional correspondence from islanders. These were noted in manuscript records such as ships' logs, journals and letters. They may then have been published in official reports and contemporary newspapers, and later compiled in monographs such as Faustini's Annals of Tristan da Cunha and Brander's Tristan da Cunha 1506-1902.
• Ideally, the figures used here should all come from primary sources, but these are often hard to access. Secondary sources have therefore had to be used in most cases.
• There is a problem in that multiple sources may differ in their reports for the same event. For instance, they may provide different dates for the visit of a particular ship, and they may quote different population numbers. Additionally, while some sources give specific dates, other may just give a year or month and year.
• Lastly, there is the question of whether the figures quoted include expats and other temporary residents. Generally, until the 1940s, the figures were for native islanders only and excluded visiting scientists and the likes of the castaway crews of wrecked ships. They may sometimes have included the resident missionaries, but that would only be three people at most, which is tolerable. From World War II onwards, there has generally been a significant number of transient officials, contractors, military personnel, scientists and other expatriates on the islands, varying between a dozen and three dozen people. However, these have nearly always been excluded from population figures.
• Figures from the official Tristan website from 2005 onwards are authoritative and provide separate numbers for resident islanders and expatriates. Because the figures are usually only updated on the arrival and departure of ships, there may be short delays before births and deaths are reflected in the numbers. Therefore, the margin of error is in the region of plus or minus two.
• Some records only report the increase or decrease in numbers since a previous ship visit, or, more complicatedly, report the number of births and deaths since a previous visit. Either situation may not include changes due to the arrival of new settlers or the departure of existing settlers (often to serve on ship's crews).
• Year-only data has been assigned to the 1st of January of the relevant year. Similarly, month-year figures have been assigned to the 1st of the relevant month.

Resolution of Duplicated Records

• Primary records are preferred to secondary or tertiary.
• Precise dates are preferred to general dates. Otherwise, month-year dates are preferred to year-only dates.
• Explicit figures are preferred to those requiring calculation using changes since a previous occasion (subject to scrutiny).
• Corroborated data is preferred where dates and/or numbers differ for the same event.
• Where two or more records are valid and all have the same date and population figure, the record published closest to the date of the event is preferred.

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank Neil Robson for his help in finding additional sources of population data, especially for the period 1910 to 1925. Also, thanks to Cynthia Green for supplying additional figures for the 1980s and early 2000s from Tristan Government records.

References

• J.Brander "Tristan da Cunha 1506-1902", London: George Allen & Unwin, 1940, 336pp.
• Marilyn Crawford "Tristan da Cunha 'Big Book' Family Tree from 1816 to 2023", Cape Town: Marilyn Crawford, August 2023.
• C.Green "Tristan da Cunha Families: Population Update", Tristan da Cunha Website,
  https://www.tristandc.com/population.php, 2014 to date.
• A.Faustini "The Annals of Tristan da Cunha", Liz Nysven personal archive, 1999, 67pp.,
  https://www.tristan.it/TRISTAN/tristanlibri/tristan_annals.pdf, accessed 27th March 2026.
  [Chronology to 23rd March 1925. Transcribed by Larry Conrad, and edited and originally published online by Paul Carroll.]
• R.Grundy & N.Robson "Nothing can stop us", [Glastonbury]: Tristan da Cunha Association, 2021, 299pp.
• D.F.Roberts "The Demography of Tristan da Cunha", Population Studies, November 1971, Vol.25, No.3, pp.465-479,
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/2173079, accessed 27th March 2026.
• D.F.Roberts "Genetic Evolution in an Isolated Population", Journal of Anthropological Research, Spring 1979, Vol.35, No.1, pp.1-17,
  https://www.jstor.org/stable/3629493.
• T.H.Tizard, H.N.Moseley, J.Y.Buchanan & J.Murray "Narrative of the cruise of H.M.S. Challenger with a general account of the scientific results of the expedition" in Report of the Scientific Results of the Voyage of HMS Challenger, Vol.1, London: HMSO, 1885, p.250,
  https://archimer.ifremer.fr/doc/00000/4756/4248.pdf, accessed 27th March 2026.
• Tristan da Cunha Government & Tristan da Cunha Association "Tristan da Cunha Website [Home page]", Internet Archive,
  https://web.archive.org/web/20260000000000*/www.tristandc.com, accessed 27th March 2026.
• A.Zettersen "The English of Tristan da Cunha", Lund Studies in English, 1969, No.37, p.23.