Now, Tristan da Cunha was not an unknown name to us, for as a child my
husband loved to hear his mother tell of her shipwreck on Inaccessible, an
uninhabited island twenty-five miles south-west of Tristan da Cunha.

She, then a child of four, and her nurse were passengers on the _Blendon
Hall_, which left London for India in May 1821, and was wrecked during a
dense fog on Inaccessible, July 23. The passengers and crew drifted ashore
on spars and fragments of the vessel. Two of the crew perished, and nearly
all the stores were lost. For four months they lived on this desolate
island. A tent made out of sails was erected on the shore to protect the
women and children from the cold and rain. They lived almost entirely on
the eggs of sea-birds.

After waiting some time in hope of being seen by a ship, they made a raft
from the remains of the wreck, and eight of the crew set off in it to try
to reach Tristan, but were never heard of again, poor fellows. A few weeks
later a second and successful attempt was made. The men reached Tristan,
but in a very exhausted state. Then the Tristanites, led by Corporal
Glass, manned their boats, and at great personal risk succeeded in
fetching off the rest of the crew and passengers, who remained on Tristan
till January 9, 1822, on which day a passing English brig took them to the
Cape of Good Hope.

This was eighty-four years ago. And now the son of that little shipwrecked
girl was seriously thinking of going out to minister to the children of
her rescuers. Here I may mention that in the whole of their history, from
1816 to 1906, they had had only two clergymen living amongst them.

The first to go out was the Rev. W. F. Taylor, under the S.P.G. in 1851, a