OF INTEREST…
ASCENSION ISLAND CELEBRATES 200 YEARS OF BRITISH SETTLEMENT
Wg Cdr Mark Taylor, Ascension Island Base Commander, and Rachel Holland, Marketing Officer for the Ascension Island Government, explain more about why Ascension was, and remains, important to the British and how the Island marked its Bicentenary.
Ascension is a tiny British Overseas territory in the middle of the South Atlantic – an isolated volcanic outcrop some 2,250 km from Brazil and 1,600 km from the coast of West Africa. The Island was discovered by the Portuguese at the very beginning of the 16th century but was not inhabited until more than 200 years later when, in 1815, Napoleon was defeated at the Battle of Waterloo and later exiled to the nearby British island of St Helena.
Consequently, the British decided to establish a naval garrison on Ascension (the nearest landfall to St Helena – some 700 miles away, in the vast South Atlantic) to foil any attempts by the French to release Napoleon from his island prison. So it was that on 22 October 1815 HMS Zenobia and her sister ship, HMS Peruvian, arrived at Ascension and dropped anchor off the west of the Island in Clarence Bay. The ships’ logs record that at 5.30pm Commander Nicholas Charles Dobree
of the Zenobia and Captain James Kearney White of the Peruvian came ashore and took possession of the Island in the name of King George III.
Today Ascension has both an RAF base and a USAF base, and is run administratively by the Ascension Island Government, headed by the Island Administrator who is appointed by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and reports to the Governor on St Helena. The Governor and Administrator are advised by a democratically-elected Council. Ascension is the temporary home of around 800 people, with a small military population.
The 200th anniversary of British settlement was an opportunity for all parts of the Ascension Island community to come together to reflect and celebrate what has been achieved since 1815. The British Base Commander, Wing Commander Mark Taylor, praised the commitment of Armed Forces personnel on Ascension
44 Envoy Winter 2015
www.raf-ff.org.uk
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