Queen's consort, visited the islands in 1957 as part of a world tour on board the royal yacht HMY Britannia. On 2 January 1954, Tristan da Cunha was visited by the Dutch ship Ruys, a passenger-cargo liner, carrying science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, his wife Ginny and other passengers. The Ruys was travelling from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to Cape Town, South Africa. The visit is described in Heinlein's book "Tramp Royale". The captain told Heinlein the island was the most isolated inhabited spot on Earth and ships rarely visited. Heinlein mailed a letter there to L. Ron Hubbard, a friend who also liked to travel, "for the curiosity value of the postmark". Biographer William H. Patterson, Jr. in his two volume "Robert A. Heinlein In Dialogue with his Century," wrote that lack of "cultural context" made it "nearly impossible to converse" with the islanders, "a stark contrast with the way they had managed to chat with strangers" while travelling in South America. Members of the crew bought penguins during their brief visit to the island. 1961 eruption of Queen Mary's Peak On 10 October 1961, the eruption of a parasitic cone of Queen Mary's Peak, very close to Edinburgh of the Seven Seas, forced evacuation of all 264 people. The evacuees took to the water in open boats, taken by the local lobster-fishing boats Tristania and Frances Repetto to uninhabited Nightingale Island. The next day, they were picked up by the diverted Dutch passenger ship Tjisadane that took them to Cape Town. The islanders later arrived in the U.K. aboard the liner M.V. Stirling Castle to a big press reception and, after a short period at Pendell Army Camp in Merstham, Surrey, were settled in an old Royal Air Force camp near Calshot, Hampshire. The following year, a Royal Society expedition reported that Edinburgh of the Seven Seas had survived. Most families returned in 1963. Gough and Inaccessible Islands wildlife reserves Gough Island was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1995 as Gough Island Wildlife Reserve. This was further extended in 2004 as Gough and Inaccessible Islands, with its marine zone extended from 3 to 12 nautical miles. These islands have been Ramsar sites – wetlands of international importance – since 20 November 2008. 21st century On 23 May 2001, the islands were hit by an extratropical cyclone that generated winds up to . A number