Hamilton became head of the company and master of an immense fortune, one of the richest men in British India.

In 1903, he bought 40 square kilometres (10,000 acres) of the tide country from the government – it included such islands as Gosaba, Rangabelia, and Satjelia.

They were people who dared not only to struggle against nature but also the predators that lived there – tigers, crocodiles, sharks and lizards.

[3] In December 1932 Rabindranath Tagore visited and stayed at Gosaba in the house of Sir Daniel Hamilton.

The entire district is situated in the Ganges Delta with numerous islands in the southern part of the region.

[9] Gosaba is one of the main deltaic islands in the Sundarban region, bounded by the Matla and Zilli rivers/ creeks.

Village panchayats under it are – Amtali, Bali I and II, Bipradaspur, Chhota Mollakhali, Gosaba, Kachukhali, Kumirmari, Lahiripur, Pathankhali, Radhanagar-Taranagar, Rangabelia, Satjelia and Sambhunagar.

Foreigners need a special permit to enter Sunderbans, which is issued in Kolkata by the Department of Tourism, Government of West Bengal.

A 5x100 kW biomass-based power plant was installed at Gosaba island, in June 1997 and has been running successfully, serving about 650 consumers through a network of distribution lines.

A 500 kW gasifier-based power plant was commissioned in the remote island of Chhota Mollakhali in June 2001.

[19] Plans are afoot to set up a 3.6 MW power plant in Durgaduani creek using tidal water.

Mostly people from the Canning, Basanti, Gosaba, Kultali, Mathurapur, Patharpratima, Namkhana, Sagar and Kakdwip are honey collectors.

The probable reason may be that being a coastal area most of the tubewells draw water from less contaminated deep aquifers.

[24] Four launches with doctors carrying medicines, sophisticated portable X-ray and echo-cardiograph machines, provided by the French author Dominique Lapierre move along the waterways of the Sundarbans to its furthest corners.