By Bob Reis, World Coin News, www.numismaster.com April 2011
Saint Helena is a little island in the middle of the south Atlantic ocean about halfway between Brazil and Angola, each about 1,200 miles away. The island is British territory, part of an administrative unit including Ascension Island about 800 miles northwest and the Tristan da Cunha group 1,500 miles south.
There were no mammals there before the humans arrived, probably in 1502 but possibly the year after. Either way, the humans were of the Portuguese persuasion, the name they gave the place referred to the wife of Roman emperor Constantine. It was so convenient for them, the Portuguese, as they were doing business and making mayhem on both sides of the Atlantic at that latitude. There was stuff to eat - birds and fish - trees to repair their boats, fresh water and a great little protected harbor. They just had to build some buildings, a little church, etc., and loosed some livestock (including rats) to roam about, but they didn’t put in any permanent settlers.
The English and the Dutch located Saint Helena in the 1580s and began to hang out there to ambush the Portuguese and Spanish boats that would show up. It was not worth the trouble, the Iberians decided after a while. The India ships would stop off at Cabinda in Angola before proceeding on to Europe. The Dutch made a formal claim in 1633 but did nothing much on the ground. Notwithstanding the Dutch paperwork, Oliver Cromwell in England gave a charter to the East India Company in 1657 to develop the island.
A little fort and some houses were built, and agriculture began. The Dutch occupied the island for a few months in 1673. East India forces took it back and development continued at an increased rate. The first coins attributed to Saint Helena appeared during this period. One can see pictures of them in the Standard Catalog of World Coins: dump type copper farthing and halfpenny, small silver 3 pence, all dated 1714. They are very reminiscent of contemporary company coins of, say, Madras in India. No offerings of these coins were found in a web search.
Administrative ineptitude and corruption on top of ecological degradation (deforestation leading to drought leading to agricultural failure, a bloom of rats and disease) brought a proposal from the governor to abandon the settlement. Strategic considerations prevailed and the colony continued as a money-losing operation. In a 1723 census, 1,100 people were noted, more than half of them slaves.
Reforms in governance allowed some social stability to be attained during the 18th century. Import of slaves was prohibited in 1792, leading to a labor shortage as economic growth continued. Chinese workers were imported, eventually getting to be about a sixth of the population, which in the early 19th century exceeded 3,500.
The island became famous in the standard historical narrative when the British brought Napoleon there. He had escaped from the island in the Mediterranean where they had kept him previously. It was thought, correctly as it turned out, that Saint Helena would be harder to get away from. Napoleon was placed there in 1815 and died in 1821. Rumours that he was poisoned circulated from the time of his death and though nothing was proved, recent tests have shown the presence of arsenic in the green floral decoration of the wallpaper in the house he lived in. Napoleon’s body is in Paris. The French have shown no interest in exhuming it, so the question remains.
1821 is numismatically significant as the year of issue of the inordinately common Saint Helena halfpenny. Why is it so common? Certainly those coins were not all sent to Saint Helena, used, then put up in airtight jars to be rediscovered for marketing to us collectors in the 20th century. Some search turned up the likely explanation.
The coins were struck on order of the East India Company. The same year there appeared a merchant token on the island, perhaps to the displeasure of said company. So, I asked, were the coins struck in India or England? Wish I had the Pridmore books sitting on my shelf. A web search turned up nothing until I looked for Heaton mint, where I found the proper reference. A “second” Soho mint was built in 1798 but had run out of work to do in 1813 when the mass production of private tokens ceased. The machinery was sold to the East India Company along with a contract for a last production run of the Saint Helena coins. Most but certainly not all of the mintage remained in England, along with some of the typical proofs of the period, and that is why we have such an easy time of collecting the 1821 halfpenny today. The machinery was sent to Bombay, where the similar looking coppers of the 1830s were struck. The dies stayed in England, where they were used to create a mule with the reverse of the 1830 Guernsey 4 doubles.
The actual money on the island was reported in contemporary documents to be the usual mix of the period: worn coins of the world, mostly Spanish, counterfeits, bits of metal. Pattern coins dated 1833 listed in the SCWC date to the year of the takeover of the governance of the island by the British crown. I found no information on these other than a 1903 reference to their existence.
Attempts were made to regularize the economy through the 19th century. All involved the import of British coins. The early arrivals disappeared. Gold vanished quickly, silver more slowly, in the direction of India, where they carried a premium. Eventually rates and trade patterns changed sufficiently to keep some of the coins on the island. But the strategic value of the place diminished, neglect ensued, emigration proceeded. Despite a temporary population boom during the 1840s when freed slaves were kept there on their way back to Africa, and another in 1900 and 1901 when prisoners taken during the Boer were similarly accommodated, the island languished.
A business was developed processing flax all the way from New Zealand. It declined after the 1950s and went bust in 1965.
The association of Saint Helena with Ascension began in 1922; with Tristan da Cunha in 1938. Modern coinage began in 1973 when a series of collector coins was launched. Sale of copper-nickel crowns by the British Royal Mint was profitable during that period and apparently has remained so over the years. These non-circulating coins continue to be made in great variety for numerous governments. People buy them, the mint makes money, the governments get something. Apparently everyone is happy. One should mention in this context the manufacture of silver and some gold versions of some of these coins. The silvers are generally fairly easy to find, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of the golds. Big chunk of gold like that, I imagine I would have noticed if I’d seen one at a show. But no, never.
None of these coins circulated to any degree on the island, though I have run into two circulated silver versions of the 1973 25 pence. Obviously this means . . . um, what exactly does it mean? Notwithstanding the low population there (and in Ascension), a decision was made to have a circulating coinage made especially for both of them together. Do they circulate on the islands? Don’t know. One could get the coins as sets from the Royal Mint. Singles have been reasonably available on the market, I imagine by way of favored dealers having purchased them from the mint rather than through travellers returning from there because, after all, hardly anyone visits for tourist purposes.
About 4,000 people live on Saint Helena, about 700 on Ascension and almost 300 on Tristan da Cunha. Probably more people collect the coins than live in the entire territory.
A few collector coins were issued for the two islands together from 1986 to 1996. After a few years’ break in the late 1980s, issue of collector crowns for the individual islands resumed and has continued until today. Why not, must go the reasoning, people buy them. If they weren’t around who would know anything about those places so far from everyplace else? Hurray for coins.
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