two boats village, ascension island, south atlantic ocean

7/28/2019 Two Boats Village, Ascension Island, South Atlantic Ocean

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Two Boats Village, Ascension Island,

South Atlantic Ocean

Dr. Jack Wheeler Jun 10th, 2013

[Today's article comes to us from world

traveler and quintessential "international man" Dr. Jack Wheeler.]

Two Boats Village, Ascension Island, South Atlantic Ocean. This is one of the

strangest places on the face of the earth, observed William Burnett, Commandant of

the HMSAscension in 1858. It remains so today.

You might ask how an island can be formally designated a ship of the British Royal

Navy, which Ascension was from 1816 to 1922. Children born on the island were

designated to have been born at sea, with their birth registered at the parish of

Wapping, the sailors district along the Thames dockyards in London.

No one has ever been allowed to legally live here; there has never been an Ascension

Islander. People have been residing here for close to 200 years; some 900 people

reside on the island today, with many born here as were their parents and

grandparents, going to school and growing up here. Yet all were or are here at the

whim of the British Government.

The people here have fewer rights than any other British citizens in the world. One of

the rights they dont have is private property. The British Crown owns the entire

island, and no private entity may own a square foot of it.

Tourists would flock here to see hundreds of green turtles laying eggs on the beaches

and vast numbers of seabirds, for world-class big game fishing and scuba diving but

the government makes it ludicrously hard to get here.

A friend of mine once gave me a t-shirt that says, I love to sail forbidden seas and

land on barbarous coasts. Im wearing it now.

For Ascension is a barbarous coast in a forbidden sea thanks to its government

making it that way. It should be an object lesson to us, for Zero is intent on making

America a barbarous government-run land, and one day it may be too late to preventhim.
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You may recall from a previous article that Portuguese captain, Joo da Nova, who

discovered St. Helena on his way back from India in 1502. On his way to India in

1501, he discovered Ascension (named such because it was May 20, Ascension Day

in the Catholic Liturgical Calendar).

800 miles north of St. Helena baking in the equatorial sun, 1,400 miles from bothAfrica and South America, da Nova found it to be a barren, waterless, scorching lava-

strewn volcanic cinder with no natural harbor. No wonder it was uninhabited and

would remain so for over 300 years.

Ships would stop there to catch the huge green turtles nesting on the beaches, each of

which supplied up to 200 pounds of tasty meat, and sail on. Sailors marooned or

shipwrecked on the island went mad and died from thirst unless rescued by another

passing ship.

Then came Napoleons exile to St. Helena in 1815. The Brits who delivered him there

in October were ordered to sail to Ascension, annex it for the Crown, and establish aRoyal Navy Garrison of Marines there in order to patrol the waters and prevent any

escape attempt by the former Emperor. By the following February, the island was

officially declared a Royal Navy Sloop of War, HMSAscension.

The island is part of the chain of volcanoes poking through the ocean along the Mid-

Atlantic Ridge, like Iceland, the Azores, St. Helena, Tristan, and Bouvet. It is also one

of the youngest, at about 1 million years old, with a main cone rising steeply to 2,800

feet, and 44 smaller cinder cones scattered around its 35 square miles. The last

eruption was 600 years ago.

The peak is now called Green Mountain, yet when Charles Darwin examined it during

his famousBeagle voyage in 1836, he thought it arid and treeless. But he had an

idea.

The biggest problem for the Marine Garrison was getting fresh water. They had found

a dripping seep way up the mountain, which they laboriously gathered in barrels and

lugged down by mules to their encampment by the shore. Darwin thought if enough

plants could be grown way up on the mountain, they would capture sea-mist that

would create enough dampness to attract clouds and thus rain.

He gave this idea to Joseph Hooker, son of the Director of the Kew Royal BotanicalGardens. Hooker persuaded the Royal Navy to send skilled gardeners to Ascension,

and arranged for a huge variety of plants, tree seedlings, fruits, flowers, and

vegetables to be shipped from India, Australia, South Africa, Brazil, the Caribbean,

and England.

The Marines and their Kroomen (laborers recruited into the Royal Navy from the

Kroo tribe in West Africa) built a large barracks up on the mountain in 1863 called

the Red Lion still intact today to grow food, raise animals like sheep and cattle,

and keep the increasing amount of water flowing. For Darwin was right. A visit to

Green Mountain is an extraordinary experience.
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You drive up from black lava fields and thorn bushes past locations like The Devils

Ashpit into grassland, then as you climb higher negotiating narrow hairpin turns you

get cedar and casuarina trees, after that eucalyptus groves and stands of Norfolk

pines. Finally you reach the Cloud Forest, perhaps the only artificially cloud forest in

the world of tree ferns, banana trees, palm trees, bamboo thickets, and flowers of

every color in incredible profusion.

It is awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping. And hardly anyone on our planet knows about it.

Thats today, however. In the 1860s, Ascension was an abomination of desolation,

as the wife of one Marine put it bad food, water rationed, heat and dust, unending

monotony in the Marine settlement of Georgetown built on a lava cinder. And there

was no reason for it Napoleon dead for 40 years, no threat from any other power, as

no one wanted the place. Yet the inertia of the British Admiralty bureaucracy kept the

place going to no end.

Finally, in 1899 with the Second Boer War raging in South Africa, the Brits had to

have a telegraph to Cape Town. The Admiralty commissioned the Eastern TelegraphCompany to lay an underwater cable from Cape Town to St. Helena to Ascension, and

on to England via Cape Verde and Madeira. The ETC opened a station in Georgetown

staffed by company personnel. For the first time, Ascension had civilians living on it.

After World War I, which the Marines spent uselessly watching the seas for no

Germans, the Admiralty finally gave up and turned the island over to the ETC in

1922. Now a Crown Dependency (and no longer a ship), no one was allowed to live

on it except ETC staff and workers on contract from St. Helena.

For 19 years, ETC people (averaging about three dozen plus wives and children) and

Saints (averaging about 100) on 3-year contracts lived a quiet and lonesome life. The

most exciting event was when ETC changed its name to Cable & Wireless. Then

came World War II and the Americans. In November 1941 note: before Pearl

Harbor on December 7 the C&W manager on the island was notified that the

American military would be building an airfield on Ascension.

A massive task force had arrived by March, and by June, a 6,000-foot runway had

been blasted through and laid down on a lava plain which had been a nesting site or

fair for sooty terns called Wideawakes for their early morning calls. The first C-47

landed on Wideawake Field, flying from Accra in West Africa, landed on July 10,

1942.

By August, daily squadrons of B-25s and even fighter planes with extra tanks were

ferrying men and munitions from Natal, Brazil (1,400 miles) via Ascension to Roberts

Field, Liberia (1,400 miles), then on to supply the Allied campaign in North Africa.

Over the course of the war, over 25,000 planes flew through Ascension, providing

utterly crucial support for the war effort in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, and

even China.

4,000 American servicemen were stationed on Ascension. Roads were built all over

the island, underground gasoline storage tanks, barracks, a hospital, a distillation unit

for distilling sea water, an electrical plant, gun emplacements, and ammunitiondumps. One thing they mysteriously didnt touch was the pier.


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Jutting straight out just a few feet from the shore at Georgetown, less than 30 feet

wide with its flat concrete face allowing the huge South Atlantic rollers often 15 feet

high or more to slam right into it, the Pierhead was built in 1820. The Americans

didnt touch it, nor build any improvement like a breakwater or actual harbor even

though they off-loaded 25,000 tons of stores on it. It is idiotically primitive and its

just the same right now today.

After WWII, the Americans pulled out and the island went back to lethargy for Cable

& Wireless workers but not for long. In 1956, the Americans were back, building a

missile tracking station monitoring missiles launched from Cape Canaveral 5,560

miles to the northeast. Then, in the 1960s, the BBC (British Broadcasting) built its

Atlantic Relay Station for shortwave broadcasts to Africa and South America, while

NASA contracted with C&W to build an earth station for its satellite parked above the

Atlantic in geostationary orbit, this for the Apollo Moon Landings.

By this time, Ascension stopped being a company island, with the Colonial Office in

London sending an Administrator to govern it. In the 1970s, NASA had WideawakeField lengthened and widened so that it could be used as an Emergency Landing Site

for the Space Shuttle flights starting in 1981.

Just in time to save the Falklands. When Argentina militarily invaded and seized the

Falklands in April, 1982, the Brits were at an incredible logistical disadvantage so

much so that the US Navy considered a successful British counter-invasion a

military impossibility. Over 8,000 miles of ocean separated Britain from the

Falklands. Once again, Ascension became the invaluable halfway link.

Wideawake Field became the busiest airport in the world during the Falklands War

(350 take-offs and landings per day). RAF Vulcan bombers were able, with multiple-

refuelings and a 9,000 mile round-trip, to attack Argentine positions. C-130s provided

critical supplies to British troops recapturing the islands. Reagan authorized the

release of 12.5 million gallons of jet fuel stored by the US at Wideawake.

The Argies surrendered to the Brits on June 14. The impossible war was won by the

Brits in 74 days which, according to Margaret Thatcher, could not have been won

without Ascension.

After the war, the RAF (British Royal Air Force) established a permanent station at

Wideawake, which continues to be jointly run by the US and the UK. The EuropeanSpace Agency built a tracking station on the island to monitor its Ariane satellite-

launching rockets from its Guiana Space Center on the east coast of South America.

The US Air Force built a GPS (global positioning satellite system) ground antenna

site on Ascension, one of only four in the world that makes GPS possible (the other

three: Cape Canaveral, Florida; Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands of the Pacific

Ocean; Diego Garcia Atoll in the Indian Ocean).

Throughout all of this history, up until nine years ago, no visitor or tourist was ever

allowed to step foot on Ascension. Private ships and yachts would be chased away by

British patrol boats. No private plane was allowed to land. Perpetrators of emergencylandings were arrested, interrogated, and quickly sent on their way.


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Starting in 2004, private ships were allowed to disembark passengers but only if

they had been previously issued an Entry Permit and provided proof of medical

evacuation insurance. Few are actually able to, however, due to the 1820 Pierhead.

There are no steps. The ship tender or Zodiac cant be tied up. You hold on to a rope,

and you have to time the swell to jump off onto the slippery concrete landing when

the swell rises up to it.

Its been like this since 1820. We were able to make it, and just barely. We had to

wait a day offshore for the swell to die down. Two weeks ago (4/18), Holland

Americas cruise shipAmsterdam could not land a single one of their over 1,000

passengers. They sailed away bitterly unhappy. This is why hardly any cruise ship

ever comes here.

The RAF operates a twice-weekly flight from its Brize Norton Air Base near Oxford

to Ascension and on to the Falklands. Its for military and contract personnel, but will

provide seats for visitors on a space-available basis. Its the only way to fly here or

out. The US Air Force operates flights to/from Patrick AFB in Florida for itspersonnel exclusively. No commercial flights to Ascension are allowed.

The weird thing is that once you get here, theres no security whatever. After a totally

perfunctory Customs check at the pier, wherever we went on the island, we didnt see

a single guard or guard post, even at the US military facilities at Wideawake, nor a

single policeman.

Just about everyone of the some 1,400 people on Ascension, aside from Brit

administrators and technicians, plus US Air Force personnel, are Saints from St.

Helena. As long as they have a contract for a job and almost every job here is done

by them they can stay. They can have wives and children but once their kids, who

were born and grew up here, turn 18, if they dont have a contract job within six

months they are kicked out and are put on the next ship for St. Helena.

Im here at the local watering hole in quaintly-named Two Boats Village, where most

people live (Georgetown is just an administrative center, although it has the only

place on the island you can stay at, the 1-star Obsidian Hotel). Saints are very friendly

folk, and over a few beers, they explained to me how rightless they are.

We cant own the homes we live in, only rent them from the government. We cant

own any property, only lease it from the government. Some of us have put our lifesavings into a business here, which we could lose overnight if the government decides

we cant stay here anymore for any reason they make up

In the British governments view, although we are British citizens and pay lots of

British taxes, we have no rights while we are here, as we have no right to be here.

Many of us were born here, went to Two Boats School. Many of our families have

been here for two or three generations. Doesnt matter were not Ascension

Islanders, for the government says theres no such thing

Ascension could be such a tourist gold mine. To see a hundred giant green sea turtles

nesting and laying their eggs on Long Beach, or watch their hatchlings thousands of
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them coming out of their shells and struggling to make it off the sand and into the

sea well, you cant see that anywhere else on the planet

The big game fishings better than anywhere too just a while ago, a bloke landed a

blue marlin over thirteen hundred pounds. Then theres the Cloud Forest on Green

Mountain, beautiful beaches like at English Bay, and lots more. But the governmentresists all our efforts to create good tourist facilities or make it easy for tourists to get

here.

This is what you get when you combine choking government control, anti-capitalism,

and an obsession with secrecy and security that tramples peoples basic human rights.

Does this sound familiar? It is precisely what Zero is doing to us. The only main

difference is that his government will end up preventing us from leaving rather than

forcing us to leave the US if we displease him. The only way well be able to leave is

if we turn over all our assets like our 401ks to the Feds beforehand.

Thats where were headed an America of forbidden seas and barbarous coasts. It

could be so easily a land of prosperity andfreedom, as it once was but our current

government is dedicated to preventing that, just like Ascensions.

Tonight, I hope to be on the RAF flight to the UK and then fly home. I havent been

on the Internet, watched TV news, or read a newspaper in over a month. Its been

blissful ignoring the world, and hope youve enjoyed this series of missives from

hidden places Antarctica, South Georgia, Tristan da Cunha, St. Helena, and now

Ascension over the last five weeks. For strangely, each has a relevance to us.

I must admit Im not looking forward to plunging back into the world, for I know it

will still be wallowing in cultural degradation and political insanity. Yet I know that

Joel Wade would advise me to quickly abandon that attitude, and refocus on the good

that can always be found, especially in America. Besides, I can hardly wait to see my

wife.

[Editor's Note: Once called "Indiana Jones of the Right" by The Washington Post, Dr.

Jack Wheeler is the founder ofTo The Point, a website that serves as "The Oasis for

Rational Conservatives". Learn more at www.tothepointnews.com.]
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two boats village, ascension island, south atlantic ocean

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