and phosphates, and hunted for its sea turtles, but for the most part remained not visited due to its remoteness and distance from normal shipping lanes. In 1968, Astove atoll was occupied by British adventurer and businessman Mark Veevers-Carter and his American wife, Wendy (Day) Veevers-Carter, who was the daughter of American author Clarence Day (Life with Father). The couple had founded, operated and sold a successful copra plantation on the Seychelles island of Remire, and sought to do the same on the much larger island of Astove. “When we landed on Astove, we found palm trees, a roofless wooden house and a graveyard,” wrote Wendy Veevers-Carter. “Part of the British-governed Seychelles, Astove was a ‘lost’ island.” The Veevers-Carters built a 14-room house, a processing center, a chapel, a store and small residences for their Seychelleois employees. While copra constituted the primary cash crop, the Veevers-Carters plantation also grew tobacco and raised, for subsistence, goats, cattle and pigs. The life of the couple and their three children were chronicled by Wendy Veevers-Carter in an article for Parade magazine in June 1969. “Mark has had painful trouble with his teeth but has borne the agony stoically,” she wrote in the article. “He must see a dentist soon, but that will mean a trip of many days.” Her husband's dental problems necessitated a March 1970 journey to Kenya for medical treatment. He took with him the couple's broken short-wave radio and one of their three children, leaving his wife and their two sons on the plantation at Astove. On March 11, the 42-year-old Veevers-Carter died under anesthesia in the dentist's chair, but because there was no radio on Astove, word could not be quickly delivered to his wife. Ten days after Veevers-Carter's death, the news was delivered to his family by the Kenyan cement carrier Bamburi, which took them to Kenya. Wendy Veevers-Carter tried to manage Astove alone until November 1970, but found the task impossible. Returning to the United States with her children, she left Astove in the care of three Seychellois employees. Although she expressed hope in maintaining control over and access to Astove, she never returned and the island was abandoned. In 2014 Astove was declared a nature reserve. A fishing resort and lodge have been built on the island. Geography Astove atoll is located SSE of Cosmoledo Atoll. It is a raised coral island of most peculiar form: