The greening of Ascension Island
WHEN our ancestors raised the Union Flag on Ascension Island in 1815, they found a landscape so barren that it could not be used as a supply centre for British ships.
The uninhabited volcano close to the equator had already been rejected as a possible stopping place by the Portuguese navigators who discovered and named it in 1501. In 1725, a Dutch ship’s officer was set ashore on the island as a punishment for
