Expedition To Ascension

Press, Volume C, Issue 29448, 25 February 1961, Page 3

Expedition To Ascension

Wideawake Island. By Bernard Stonehouse. Hutchinson. 220 pp. with index and end-piece maps. Illustrated.

To celebrate its centenary, the British Ornithologists’ Union promoted two expeditions to ornithologically unexplored places. This book is the story of the expedition to Ascension Island, a cluster of volcanic cones in the tropical Atlantic Ocean, a few degrees south of the Equator. The union chose to lead the expedition Dr. Bernard Stonehouse, a biologist of experience in expeditions to Antarctica and sub-Antarctica. Dr. Stonehouse is now a senior lecturer in zoology at Canterbury University. An authority on sea birds. Dr. Stonehouse was especially well equipped to lead a study of ornithology on Ascension, which houses no fewer than 11 species of sea birds, ranging from the small Fairy Tern to the large Frigate Bird. The book takes its name from the about two million Sooty Terns—known as Wideawakes—who breed every year on the Ascension lava cones.

Dr. Stonehouse’s popular account of 19 months of field work includes not only inquiries into the habits and behaviour of sea birds and the answers the expedition found, but investigations into animal life, especially of the huge marine turtles that abound. Dr. Stonehouse made intensive inquiries also into the record of human habitation on Ascension to determine what influence it may have had on the evolution of bird life. These inquiries provide Dr. Stonehouse’s readers with a fascinatingly interesting slice of history, and the item that

Ascension was occupied by the Royal Navy in 1815 to forestall any attempt by the French to release Napoleon when he was imprisoned on

St. Helena. Subsequently, Ascension became an important cable station. Its history became thoroughly up-to-date with the establishment of an American station for the tracking of experimental rocket missiles.

So much background provides material for a first class story, and Dr. Stonehouse does it justice. He adroitly mixes scientific research with history, he has an eye for a picturesque character, and he introduces a leavening of humour. He writes without pretentiousness, and occasionally reveals a neat turn of phrase. Dr. Stonehouse’s book should be widely enjoyed.