ISLAND’S FRIEND

Taranaki Daily News, 13 July 1935, Page 6 (Supplement)

ISLAND’S FRIEND

LONDON SOLICITOR’S LOVE. By a strange coincidence there have appeared in British papers on the same day a letter from a man about the matter nearest his heart and the announcement of his death. Mr. Douglas Gane, who has died at 72, was secretary of the Tristan da Cunha Fund. Always he had been interested in the bleak island 1329 miles from the nearest land, and in the end he became the champion of this lonely outpost of the Empire. Constantly he wrote to the press about the hardships on that rocky island, about the great loneliness, for ships only call rarely, though two have just called in one day, for the first time in the island’s history. He. reminded us of the people’s loyalty and courage and their plight when the harvest fails.

His last letter to the press states that the British Museum has accepted some records of Tristan, among them documents concerning Corporal Glass, who founded the settlement in 1817 and ruled it till 1853. Two of the documents really form the island’s Constitution, and Dr. Robin Flower says the set of papers is altogether a fascinating addition to our materials foi' the history of the British Empire. There was something romantic in the attachment of this London solicitor to the far-away island; but it was a romance that took a most practical and benevolent form. In him the 172 inhabitants of Tristan da Cunha have lost a most devoted friend.