In 1924 a whale was washed up on Berry Sands.

In 1924 a whale was washed up on Berry Sands.
Whales are not often seen in The Hargreaves Archipelago.

Hargreaves Cicada

Chremistica Hargreavesia photographed by Elza Rowley- Hooper.
Visitors to Tamba-Tamba are often astonished by the noise of the cicadas. Chremistica Hargreavesia is among the loudest insects in the world.

It's a whopper!

 

Congratulations to Doug Henderson on landing this monster Toppimuri, which weighed 68 kg!

Investments Manager Doug, who was on his first ever trip to Tamba-Tamba, was out fishing with Marvin Hooper when he landed the whopper.

'If you like the thrill of big game fishing and a friendly , laid back atmosphere then Tamba- Tamba is a great place to visit!' said 37 year old Doug, of Staines in Middlesex.

The Hargreaves Hornbill

Antracoceros Hargreavesia

John Jackson Stock drew this fantastic male hornbill in about 1850. At the time it was already noted that there were very few hornbills on Tamba- Tamba.
Caetano do Tristao humorously named the island Tome- Tome in reference to the mournful honking call of the hornbill.
Three factors led to the extinction of this noble bird.
1- Its meat was exceptionally good.
2- During the Imperial era there was a growing export market for its feathers.
3- Deforestation of the interior.

By the time that Jefferson Stock was writing an article for the Royal Geographical Society on the work of H. H. Hargreaves in 1895 he noted:
It is many a year since anyone observed even a single Horn Bill on Tamba- Tamba...

Goats...

Capra Wessalia

Goats are very important on Tamba- Tamba.
do Tristao mentioned herds of wild goats in his account of the island.
Wessel's islanders had kept domesticated goats for centuries before the arrival of the Dutch.
Several goats were taken from Wessel's on board the Dreadful, and the majority of the domesticated goats on Tamba-Tamba are descended from this stock.
No cow has ever set foot on the island, and goats have provided generations of islanders with milk, cheese and meat.
Even in the downtown Palmerston you will see goats grazing in vacant lots.

Hugh Horton Hargreaves

Thanks to the nepotistic influence of his brother, the leader of the HMS Badger Expedition, Captain Charles Hargreaves RN, Hugh Horton Hargreaves spent more than a year in the archipelago studying the fauna.
On his return to London he published of his Theory of Selective Evolution, which was based on his observations of the ways in which the isolated animals of the archipelago had developed, seemingly in a response to the environment. The publication of his Theory of Selective Evolution caused a furore, and ultimately led to his incarceration in Bedlam.
Hargreaves stated that he had established that all species descended over time from common ancestors,and proposed the theory that this branching pattern of resulted from a process that he called selective evolution.

In the face of opposition from theologists and the scientific establishment, Hargreaves became increasingly paranoid, and made the rash decision to bolster his theory by including references to non existent species. His detailed fabrications of the habits of such invented creatures as Hargreaves sea-otter and Hargreaves Walrus make fascinating reading, but ultimately detracted from the scientific value of his actual work.

One lasting testimony to Hargreaves' important work on Tamba- Tamba is the large number of previously unclassified animals that now bear the prefix 'Hargreaves'.

The HMS Badger Expedition

The name Hargreaves Archipelago appeared for the first time on the charts published by the Royal Navy in 1830 . These were produced by Captain Charles Horton Hargreaves.
In 1826 the Admiralty had revealed plans for an expedition to ' the colony of Tamba- Tamba and the attendant archipelago...'
The main purpose of the expedition was to conduct a hydrographic survey of the area in order to to produce nautical charts showing navigational and sea depth information for naval war or commerce, along with drawings of the hills as seen from the sea showing measured heights of the hills.
It was also proposed to expand on the work of the Sir Surtees Gough expedition and gather more information on the island itself.
The vessel chosen was HMS Badger , a Cherokee class 10-gun brig-sloop.
The expedition , a year in the planning, was to be led by Captain Charles Horton Hargreaves RN (1798-1838).
Captain Hargreaves pulled some strings at the Admiralty to find a role for his brother, Hugh Horton Hargreaves (1801-1862) on the expedition. A keen naturalist and skilled draughtsman who saw himself as a second Sir Joseph Banks, Hugh Horton Hargreaves had studied medicine at Edinburgh before moving on to Cambridge to study marine biology. In fact, whilst at college, he had bombarded Sir Joseph Banks with letters of admiration in which he also outlined his various theories at great length.
Captain Hargreaves would concentrate on the surveying and charting whilst Hugh Horton would take more interest in the natural history of the region.
The Badger sailed from Plymouth on September 1st 1827.

Sports in Tamba- Tamba, part 1: Field Sports and Fishing.

Mrs Jackson with Lucifer.

Sports and games on the island fall into 3 categories:

1.Field sports and fishing.
2.Sports in general.
3.Tamba- Tamba sports and games.

Let's take a look at field sports and fishing:
Hunting and fishing have always been an integral part of life on Tamba- Tamba. Naturally there is now less reliance on these skills for survival, but the skills have evolved into competitive field sports.
Fishing- rod fishing from boats is surprisingly popular with the urban population of Palmerston. Toppimuri and Southern Ocean Bass are the main catch. Some shark fishing expeditions leave Hooper's Point. Beach fishing is more popular still, with clubs participating in many competitions and cups.

Palmerston Ladies Rod Club.

Rod fishing at Berry Sands.

Shooting- we have seen how the shooting of Hargreaves bandicoot assumed a ritualistic status in the culture of the island. There is no big game in the archipelago, so hunting is mostly confined to the annihilation of smaller mammals such as the Hargreaves Fox and the Shorteared Coney.
Wildfowling is particularly popular (sea birds were traditionally a great source of meat for the islanders). The Hargreaves Hornbill was an early victim of over zealous hunting.

Cox family hunting

Hunting- Hunting on foot with dogs has a long tradition on the island. Dog racing has evolved from this. Modern youth have taken this tradition and revived it. A good dog is something of a status symbol.

Palmerston lads with dogs.

The Fishing

Fishing has, of course, always been of great importance to the inhabitants of Tamba- Tamba.
When HMS Dreadful left the island the settlers retained (after what Cock described as 'much heated bargaining') the ship's jolly boat, and this was the principal craft of the island until it was damaged during the bombardment.
Berry, the ship's carpenter was soon engaged in the construction of other boats modelled on the jolly boat.
Other mutineers (Hooper, Rowley and Stock) had experience of fishing, and this was put to good use.
Fish commonly caught in the waters off Tamba- Tamba include Cod, Hargreaves Skate, Gurnard, Toppimuri, Slingfish, Hargreaves Bristleback and Southern Ocean Bass.
Pair trawling between two small boats remains the most common practice, although Orlando Hooper was running a sophisticated modern trawler, The Gannet, brought from Rhode Island as early as 1952.

Gannet II

Interestingly an English visitor to the island in 1955 noted that a type of coelacanth were regularly landed by Tamba- Tamba boats and were considered commonplace by the locals.

Coelacanth photographed at Hooper's Point in 1955 by Archibald Mackenzie- Smith.

The Hargreaves Turtle

Chelonia Hargreavesia

do Tristao described the turtles of Tamba- Tamba in his account of his time on the island.
Thomas Cock also cited their presence as a ready source of food:
' upwords (sic) of a hundred lbs weight, they provide the most tenderest meat... and are well easily taken. They exist and recreate in such grate (sic) numbers that the demands of even one thousand population would scarcely dent there (sic) numbers.'
Of course, Cock was being optimistic.
By the time that Hargreaves was in the archipelago just 50 years after the mutineers landed he estimated that there were approximately 1,000 adult turtles there during the mating season. According to Hargreaves 40% of eggs/ baby turtles never reached maturity.
Orlando Hooper, Tamba- Tamba's oldest resident, remembers the black days of the 1950's when there were ' about a dozen' turtles coming up the beach in the mating season.
An increased interest in conservation has helped to remedy the decline, and WWF experts say the population now approaches that of Hargreaves' day, with islanders being allowed to harvest set quotas of turtles to meed traditional craft and culinary needs.

The Hargreaves Bandicoot

Unsurprisingly many of the species of animals on the archipelago are named after Hargreaves, the ground breaking naturalist who catalogued these animals in his revolutionary work on evolution.
Probably the best known of the animals native to Tamba- Tamba is the Hargreaves Bandicoot (Microperoryctes Hargreavsia). It featured on the pre- revolutionary coat of arms, and is as much of a national symbol as the kangaroo is to Australia.
Incredibly, the Hargie as it is affectionately known, was almost hunted to extinction, largely due to the traditional Easter culls that dated back to the earliest settlements.
These culls developed into highly effective sporting events during which thousands of Hargies would be bagged.

Thankfully the practice was outlawed after the revolution and the Hargreaves Bandicoot now thrives on the island once more.

The Hargie cull circa 1910...

The Easter Cull of 1963.