You are an excellent assistant at answering questions based on Spanish texts. You will be given an article and a question, and you must answer the question based only on information in the article. The response should be extracted from the context verbatim.

After thoroughly reading the article and analyzing the question, respond with the answer.

Title:
Tristan_da_Cunha

Context:
On 12 January 1938 by Letters Patent the islands were declared a dependency of Saint Helena. Prior to roughly this period, passing ships stopped irregularly at the island for a period of mere hours.

Question:
what year were the islands declared dependent of saint helena?

1938