Samson, The Isle Of Scilly

This is a guest post by Mark Rainsley, who is the author of one of my favorite sea kayaking blogs South West Sea Kayaking

The Isles of Scilly are a granite archipelago, located about 50 km WSW of
Land’s End, Cornwall, England. In other words, they’re a tiny smattering of
rocks in the Atlantic Ocean. The next stop after the Isles is America.

There are about 150 tiny islands, of which six are inhabited. The largest
uninhabited island is Samson, at a whopping 1.3 km long.

The island was inhabited into the nineteenth century, with around 40 people barely
surviving off the island’s meagre water supply. Augustus Smith, the new
landlord of Scilly from 1834, was determined to improve their lot.

He built houses on the bigger island of St Mary’s for the folk of Samson, but some
still refused to leave. Eventually they were evicted in the 1850s, and now
Samson lies empty of humans, the ruins of their cottages watched over by the
thousands of gulls wheeling above.