Anthropological Approach to Vulnerability and Major Hazards - Vulnerability of Coastal Ecosystems and Adaptation - page 270

forced him to leave Ambrym and the New Hebrides. This series of
misfortunes in succession added Lamb to the community of preachers
who named the island the “Mother of Obscurity”.
Seventeen years later, in the spring of 1913, Dip Point was
provided with a hospital, a church and a school that were active under
the auspices of a new administrator, Doctor Bowie. However, on the
7th December, a joint eruption of the two active volcanos on
Ambrym, Benbow and Marum, caused all these edifices to disappear
and all the settlers to flee. According to Doctor Bowie's testimony,
“close to Dip Point six distinct craters surfaced” [MAR 14, p. 390],
torrents of water and lava flowed there for some days. The hospital in
particular was destroyed and swallowed up by the formation of a new
crater, and its site as well. The island was unrecognizable, some land
had disappeared, other land was formed, entire forests and villages
were burned, ashes and dead animals were strewn across the territory.
The mission to Ambrym would remain in the annals of the
Presbyterian church as having been the most costly in terms of human
resource and finance [MIL 89, p. 10].
7.3.1. The point of view of the settlers
For historians and geologists, this eruption was the most
devastating of the 20th Century in the New Hebrides. For the non-
native inhabitants of the island - Robert Fletcher (a graduate of
Oxford, having fled to the New Hebrides from a professorship that he
hated), the Reverend Maurice Frater and Doctor Bowie - the volcanic
phenomenon was initially sublime (an ambiguous idea in itself). For
Doctor Bowie, whose observations were noted by Professor Marshall:
The view was magnificent, everything inspiring awe. The
lava, partially incandescent, burnt the enormous trees,
throwing them in an embrace into the air. A little after 3
o'clock in the morning the lava sunk with a wild hissing
noise sauvage and disappeared roaring powerfully
into the sea. The view was then superb, and I will
never forget it.