GODFATHER TO ISLAND

Taranaki Daily News, 18 July 1933, Page 15

GODFATHER TO ISLAND

EMPIRE’S LONELIEST SPOT. SEVEN THOUSAND MILES AWAY. The story is told by a Daily Express correspondent at Bolton, Lancashire, of the man who has adopted an island. This man is a Bolton chemist, Mr., F. B. Hirst, and the island is the loneliest scrap of the British Empire, Tristan da Cunha, 7000 miles away in the South Atlantic. In 1910, when Mr. Hirst was in business at Batley, Yorkshire, a woman customer from London told him about Tristan da Cunha, the island the British Empire forgot, with its few score descendants of shipwrecked sailors. She described the plight of the islanders, a little community of Scots, Italians, Danes and Creoles. There was only one cup on the island when she arrived, she told him—and that was cracked. From that moment Mr. Hirst became the fairy godfather of Tristan. He wrote to the islanders, sent them a crate of china, and through his local member the matter was taken up in Parliament. Questions were asked in the House; the Colonial Office wrote and thanked the Batley chemist and sent a gunboat from the Cape. Since then Mr. Hirst has been the islanders’ main touch with civilisation. He has kept up a regular correspondence, has sent them medicines, books, pictures and tools bought out of his own pocket They write to him for advice, information and even prescriptions. He lias tried to get Bolton schoolchildren to send postcards to the children of Tristan, who have never seen a tramcar, a motor-car, a cinema, a train or a shop. Some years ago the islanders asked Mr. Hirst if he would go out and become a resident magistrate and administrator for them to settle their disputes and unravel their complicated problems of barter. Mr. Hirst would have liked nothing better—but 7900 miles presents a problem. Tristan, however, will always remain his “dream island.” He says he feels he knows every inch of it—its little bays, its white cottages, and its characters.

In his mind’s eye he has watched its families grow up and marry, seen the children christened. Mr. Hirst told, for instance, of Mrs. Rogers, with her eight children, whom she teaches herself. He has a letter written by her ten-year-old son Ruddy —named after his own boy—a letter

which would have put to shame many an English boy of 16. The island children, Mr. Hirsi (aid. wait up all night when the gunbeat pays its twice-yearly visits, bearing his letters and gifts. Mr. Hirst end the Islanders are real friends —who may never meet.