Captain
James Cook named the island Sandwich Island in honour of his patron, the
Earl of Sandwich, on his 1774 voyage on . The island was referred to by its French name, Île Vate, or simply Vate, in newspaper reports in 1850 and 1851, when it was visited by the
Royal Navy vessel
HMS Havannah Coconut trees were planted on large plantations by European settlers in the islands in the late 1800s, owing to the growing demand for
copra, the dried flesh of the coconut that contains the oil. The first of these coconut plantations was on Efate, planted in 1877. During the 19th century,
Australian,
British,
French, and
German settlers settled in the territory of the New Hebrides. In 1878, the
United Kingdom and
France declared all of the
New Hebrides to be neutral territory. In 1887, the
Anglo-French Joint Naval Commission took charge of the territory. On 9 August 1889,
Franceville, an area around present-day Port Vila, declared itself an independent commune under the leadership of elected
mayor/
president Ferdinand-Albert Chevillard, and with its own red, white and blue flag with five stars. It became one of the first
self-governing nations in recorded history to practice
universal suffrage without distinction of sex or race. However, the new government was soon suppressed, and by June 1890, Franceville as a commune was reported to have been "practically broken up", with the Naval Commission resuming control. Between 1903 and 1905, one of the first major geological works of
Melanesia was produced by Australian geologist Sir
Douglas Mawson (later renowned for his expeditions to
Antarctica). After spending from April to September 1903 exploring the islands with W.T. Quaife, Mawson produced a report which included geological maps of the islands of Efate and
Santo. This was his first major independent geological work. The men travelled to the islands aboard the
Ysabel, under the auspices of the British Deputy Commissioner of the New Hebrides, Captain Ernest Rason.
HMS Archer was also used on the trip. In 1906, the naval commission was replaced by a more structured British-French
Condominium. On 13 March 2015,
Port Vila, the island's largest human settlement and the capital of Vanuatu, bore extensive damage from
Cyclone Pam. In December 2024,
a magnitude 7.3 earthquake reportedly damaged almost every single house on Efate, resulting in 19 fatalities. The
United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimated that 116,000 people had been directly affected by the earthquake, equivalent to a third of Vanuatu's population. == Geography ==