Stoltenhoff Island is a small uninhabited island in the South Atlantic Ocean, part of the Nightingale Islands. It is the smallest of the Nightingale Islands, and is to the northwest of Nightingale Island itself. They are governed as part of Tristan da Cunha, an archipelago and part of the British overseas territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. The island is part of the Nightingale Islands group Important Bird Area (IBA), identified as such by BirdLife International as a breeding site for seabirds and endemic landbirds.
Inaccessible Island, part of the Tristan da Cunha group in the UK, is the exposed peak of an extinct volcano in the South Atlantic Ocean. Covering an area of 12.65 km², it was discovered by the Dutch in 1652, a century and a half after Tristan da Cunha. Its name, "Inaccessible," reflects the challenging and hazardous approach to the island.In October 1871, two Prussian brothers, Gustav and Friedrich Stoltenhoff, attempted to establish a seal oil production site on the island. At the time, seal oil was in high demand for its use in cosmetics and as a lamp fuel. However, their venture was unsuccessful, and after two years, they were evacuated by the British ship “HMS Challenger”. Stoltenhoff Island, located nearby (closer to Nightingale Island), is named after these two brothers.[2]
Inaccessible Island, part of the Tristan da
Cunha group in the UK, is the exposed peak of an extinct volcano in the South
Atlantic Ocean. Covering an area of 12.65 km², it was discovered by the Dutch
in 1652, a century and a half after Tristan da Cunha. Its name,
"Inaccessible," reflects the challenging and hazardous approach to
the island.
In October 1871, two Prussian brothers, Gustav
and Friedrich Stoltenhoff, attempted to establish a seal oil production site on
the island. At the time, seal oil was in high demand for its use in cosmetics
and as a lamp fuel. However, their venture was unsuccessful, and after two
years, they were evacuated by the British ship “HMS Challenger”. Stoltenhoff
Island, located nearby (closer to Nightingale Island), is named after these two
brothers.[2]
If someone thinks that they will hear the
beautiful song of the nightingale on Nightingale Island, they are greatly
mistaken.
It was originally named "Gebrooken
Eyland" (Broken island) by the Dutch ship the Nachtglas under
Jan Jacobszoon in January 1656, who found no safe anchorage; the first landing
was not made until 1696 (most likely by Willem de Vlamingh in August of that
year). French captain Pierre d'Etcheverry also visited the island in September
1767, first recording the two nearby islets now named Stoltenhoff and Middle. The
island was later renamed after British captain Gamaliel Nightingale, who explored the
island in 1760.[3]
The Questionable Rewards of a Visit to Inaccessible Island[4]
Inaccessible was first sighted in 1656, and the
first known landing wasn’t until 1803. But the history of the island gets
extremely weird in 1871, when two Moscow-born German brothers, Gustav and
Frederick Stoltenhoff, decided to settle on Inaccessible Island and operate a
trading business, mostly of seal pelts. Eric Rosenthal describes their
misadventures in a 1952 book called Shelter From the Spray. “If ever an
island deserved its name, it would seem that Inaccessible did,” writes
Rosenthal. “Its vast square summit rose like a wall above the little ship as
she tossed about at her moorings off the western side.”
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Frederick and Gustav Stoltenhoff[5]
The Stoltenhoffs, fresh out of reluctant
service in the Franco-Prussian War, had landed on Tristan once and heard tales
of another island, nearby and uninhabited. A Tristanian had told them of a
harvest of 1,700 seal pelts on Inaccessible the year before, a treasure trove
of money. So the brothers decided out of a sort of Robinson Crusoe-type lust
for adventure, as well as valuable seal pelts, to live on Inaccessible Island
for awhile.
Their two years on Inaccessible were completely
miserable. They had no idea how to build shelter, did not know how to catch or
skin a seal, forgot to bring vital supplies like rope and candles, had their
fishing boat and house repeatedly destroyed by weather, and, by their accounts,
were screwed with by mean Tristanians who came by every few months, stealing
their supplies and shooting the wild goats the Stoltenhoffs relied on.
(Previous visitors to the island had introduced some domestic goats and pigs,
which survived during the time the Stoltenhoffs were there; the animals were
completely removed in the 1950s.) The brothers brought a dog and a few puppies;
the dogs fled and became feral within a few weeks.
Surviving mostly on penguin eggs and wild boar
they described as disgusting (when they could even catch one), the brothers
survived, clumsily and improbably, through two full winters. From the book:
“‘The penguins are coming ashore!’ Gustav shrieked with delight. ‘If only we
can get at them.’ Whether through their own weakness, or the superior instinct
of their prey during the first few days, they failed to kill a single bird.
Instead they found themselves pecked and once or twice even knocked over by the
vigorous antics of their opponents.”
After two years of being physically bested by
penguins, having killed only 19 seals (the pelts of which they traded for some
biscuits), and every few months refusing to be rescued, the Stoltenhoffs gave
up and went home. Having already been named and featured in atlases,
Inaccessible couldn’t be named after the Stoltenhoffs, but a tiny rock nearby
did not have a name when they were rescued, and was named Stoltenhoff Island,
after them. Nobody since the Stoltenhoffs have tried to live for any real
length of time on Inaccessible Island.
Tristan da Cunha, which owns Stoltenhoff and other nearby uninhabited islands, is in an unusual situation with regards to coinage as well stamps editing. It is not an autonomous or independent colony, being a part of the British overseas territory with the rather unwieldy name of "Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha", yet the island has permission to strike its own commemorative coinage. Officially, the currency used on the island is the British pound, not the St Helena pound used in the rest of the territory.
Apparently the Island's administrators believe their mandate to issue coinage extends to issuing coins in the names of the uninhabited islands under its control: Gough Island and Nightingale Island have also had coins issued in their names. It's part of a broader push by certain private mints to appeal to OFEC collectors by making "coins" in the name of places that currently have no coinage of their own.[6]
Inaccessible's north-east coast is 40 kilometres (25 miles) from Longbluff on Tristan's south-west coast. This view is from about 10 kilometres away, showing the sheer cliffs which give the island its forbidding name. Visible straight ahead is Salt Beach, where the German Stoltenhoff brothers attempted to colonise the island between 1871-3. Rev Wilde organised a '5-year' farming project at Salt Beach which failed to live up to its aims and was abandoned after he left Tristan in 1940, but islanders still occasionally visit to pick the apples planted in the 1930s.[7]
[1] English Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoltenhoff_Island]
[2] French Wikipedia [https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%8Ele_Stoltenhoff]
[3] English Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nightingale_Island]
[4] Article by Dan Nosowitz, November
1, 2018 [https://www.atlasobscura.com/]
[5] Picture from article by Anton Diakonov, В мире есть остров с названием Инаксессибл [https://perito.media]
[7] https://www.tristandc.com/inaccessible.php
