Ascension Island is an isolated volcanic island, near 8° south of the Equator in the South Atlantic Ocean. It is about from the coast of Africa and from the coast of South America. It is governed as part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, of which the main island, Saint Helena, is around to the southeast. The territory also includes the sparsely populated Tristan da Cunha archipelago, to the south, about halfway to the Antarctic Circle.
Ascension Island was discovered by the Portuguese seafarer João da Nova in 1501, before being named Ascension by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1503 on Ascension Day. Ascension Island was garrisoned by the British Admiralty from 22 October 1815 to 1922 and was an important refuelling stop for ships and commercial airliners in the days of international air travel by flying boats. During World War II, it was an important naval and air station, especially providing antisubmarine warfare bases in the Battle of the Atlantic.Victory at Sea (Series title), Volume-10 "Beneath the Southern Cross" 1952 production of NBC, (Disc 2 of DVD collection reproduction ca. 2007–08)
The island is the location of RAF Ascension Island, which is a Royal Air Force station, a European Space Agency rocket tracking station, a British-American signals intelligence facility and the BBC World Service Atlantic Relay Station. The island was used extensively as a staging point by the British military during the Falklands War. Ascension Island hosts one of four ground antennas that assist in the operation of the Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational system (the others are on Kwajalein Island, Diego Garcia, and Cape Canaveral). NASA operates a Meter Class Autonomous Telescope (MCAT) on Ascension Island for tracking orbital debris, which is potentially hazardous to operating spacecraft and astronauts, at a facility called the John Africano NASA/AFRL Orbital Debris Observatory.
History
Discovery Two Portuguese chronicles suggest that João da Nova leading the third armada to India discovered Ascension in 1501. Da Nova is variously said to have sailed from Lisbon on 1 March,Gaspar Corrêa and Rodrigo Jose de Lima Felner, Lendas da India. Publicadas de ordem da Classe de sciencias moraes, politicas e bellas lettras da Academia real das sciencias de Lisboa e sob a dirrecção de Rodrigo José de Lima Felner, vol. 2 (Lisboa Typographia da Academia Real das Sciencias, 1858), 235. 5 March,João de Barros, Manoel Severim de Faria, and João Baptista Lavanha, Da Asia de João de Barros e de Diogo de Couto, vol. I, book V, chapter X (Lisbon: Regia Officina Typografica, 1778), 466.Damião de Góis, Chronica do serenissimo senhor rei D. Manoel (Lisbon: Na officina de M. Manescal da Costa, 1749), 84. 11 March,Duarte Leite, História da colonização portuguesa do Brasil, Chapter IX, O mais antigo mapa do Brasil, ed. Carlos Malheiro Dias, vol. 2 (Porto: Litografia Nacional, 1922), 251. 26–27 MarchWilliam Brooks Greenlee, The Voyage of Pedro Alvares Cabral to Brazil and India (London: Hakluyt Society, 1938), 139. or 10 April.Edzer Roukema, 'Brazil in the Cantino Map', Imago Mundi 17 (1963): 15 João de Barros wrote that passing eight degrees beyond the equator, towards the south, an island was found to which the name Concepcão was given whilst Damião de Góis' later chronicle described the sighting of an island south of the line which was named Conçeicam.Barros, Faria, and Lavanha, Da Asia de João de Barro, I, book V, chapter X:466. Several references suggest the island was rediscovered and named Ascension by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1503 on Ascension Day.
Dry and barren, the island had little appeal for passing ships except for collecting fresh meat, and was not claimed for the Portuguese Crown. Mariners could hunt for the numerous seabirds and the enormous female green turtles that laid their eggs on the sandy beaches. The Portuguese also introduced goats as a potential source of meat for future mariners.
In February 1701, HMS Roebuck, commanded by William Dampier, sank in the common anchoring spot in Clarence Bay to the northwest of the island. Sixty men survived for two months until they were rescued. Almost certainly, after a few days they found the strong water spring in the high interior of the island, in what is now called Breakneck Valley (there is a much smaller water source, lower on the mountain, which was named Dampier's Drip by people who probably misinterpreted Dampier's story).
It is possible, but disputed, that the island was sometimes used as an open prison for criminal mariners, although there is only one documented case of such an exile, a Dutch ship's officer, Leendert Hasenbosch, set ashore at Clarence Bay as a punishment for sodomy in May 1725.see Carl Friedrich Behrens, Reise durch die Sued-Laender und um die Welt (1737), p. 250, who wrote that various criminal mariners had been exiled to the island; also in Alex Ritsema A Dutch Castaway on Ascension Island in 1725 (2010), pp. 26, 115–117. British mariners found the Dutchman's tent, belongings and diary in January 1726; the man's remains were not found. His diary was published in translation in London later that same year, under the title Sodomy Punish'd.Sodomy Punish'd, as well as two other translations of the diary are available at
Organised settlement Organised settlement of Ascension Island began in 1815, when the British garrisoned it as a precaution after imprisoning Napoleon on Saint Helena to the southeast. On 22 October, the s and claimed the island for King George III. The Royal Navy designated the island as a stone frigate, HMS Ascension, with the classification of "Sloop of War of the smaller class".
The location of the island made it a useful stopping-point for ships and communications. The Royal Navy used the island as a victualling station for ships, particularly those of the West Africa Squadron working against the slave trade. A garrison of Royal Marines was based at Ascension from 1823 and Colonel Edward Nicolls became the first commandant.
Botany In 1836 the second Beagle voyage visited Ascension. Charles Darwin described it as an arid, treeless island, with nothing growing near the coast. Sparse vegetation inland supported "about six hundred sheep, many goats, a few cows & horses," large numbers of guineafowl imported from the Cape Verde islands, rats, mice, and land crabs; he agreed with the saying attributed to the people of St. Helena that "We know we live on a rock, but the poor people at Ascension live on a cinder." He noted the care taken to sustain "houses, gardens & fields placed near the summit of the central mountain," and cisterns at roadsides to provide drinking water. The springs were carefully managed, "so that a single drop of water may not be lost: indeed the whole island may be compared to a huge ship kept in first-rate order." In commenting on this, he noted René Primevère Lesson's remark "that the English nation alone would have thought of making the island of Ascension a productive spot; any other people would have held it as a mere fortress in the ocean."
In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and years thereafter, ships came with an assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe, and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.
Astronomical observation Beginning in July 1877, the astronomer Sir David Gill and his wife Isobel spent six months on Ascension Island. This was to take advantage of the near approach of Mars occurring that year. Based on Johannes Kepler's laws of planetary motion, Gill conceived that in pioneering the use of a heliometer, he would be able to accurately measure the position of Mars while in opposition on his own, rather than in combination with many observers simultaneously recording the position of the planet as had been the technique during the time. This is because a heliometer is a telescope that uses a split image to measure the angular separation of celestial bodies. In observing this from near the equator, a greater observable distance would be visible, hence a temporary observatory being decided upon for Ascension.
Although originally based in Georgetown, David and Isobel found the evenings to be too cloudy to make observations of the night sky due to Georgetown being located downwind of orographic clouds that formed nightly over Green Mountain. Isobel quickly endeavoured to find an area less affected by the evening cloud and trekked several miles over lava fields to find a new location. Having found an area on the southwest of the island seemingly less affected, they then had to determine how to move 20 tons of delicate observational equipment to the new location. Fortunately, a small, clear beach was located nearby which was used for landing the equipment by sea. This was later named Mars Bay, a name which it carries to this day and which has since been designated a Nature Reserve. The couple then spent several months camped out at the bay making their observations, assisted by a Kru sailor (at that time called a krooman) and a marine.
All of the effort was ultimately a success, producing a solar distance of miles, which is a range from since shown to be (just) correct by the modern measurement of As a result of his work on the solar parallax, David Gill went on to be appointed Royal Astronomer at the Cape of Good Hope.
End of Admiralty rule and early government Between 1872 and 1889, the population of the island was listed as HMS Flora (Tender), under the orders of the Commander-in-Chief, Cape of Good Hope, estimated to number just 150 in 1888.Six Months in Ascension: An Unscientific Account of a Scientific Expedition, Isobel Black Gill, J. Murray, 1878, page 65 had been the guardship at Ascension from 1865 to 1872 before being ordered south to become the Simonstown depot ship. Five ratings died while on a recreational boat trip in 1879.
In 1899, as part of the British effort in the Second Boer War, the Eastern Telegraph Company (later Cable & Wireless plc) installed the first submarine communications cable from the island, connecting Britain with her colonies in South Africa.
The Island was under direct control of the Board of Admiralty until 1922. In 1922, letters patent made Ascension a dependency of Saint Helena, with control being officially handed over to the Eastern Telegraph Company from the Admiralty on 20 October 1922. The island was managed by the head of the Eastern Telegraph Company on the island until 1964 when the British Government appointed an administrator to represent the Governor of Saint Helena in Ascension.
World War II