ST. HELENA PILGRIMAGE

The Press, New Zealand, 12^th April 2010

Dependent as the “Saints” are on that vital sea connection, it is no wonder that they throng to the harbour edge when the RMS arrives.

It is almost 11am as my fellow passengers wait in the forward saloon of the ship for the launch that will ferry us ashore. Immigration formalities have been completed on board, and the RMS is anchored off shore from Jamestown.

Beyond the crowds on the waterfront I can see a U-shaped valley dotted with low-rise buildings. To the right of the valley I can just make out the infamous Jacob’s Ladder of 699 steps leading almost vertically upwards to the old military fortifications. I had been told that if you succeed in ascending and descending these steps in one day, the St. Helena Museum will issue you with a special certificate.

Stepping ashore from the motor launch, and taking care not to slip into the water, as certain visitors including a certain colonial governor in his plumed hat are said to have done, I am amazed by the buildings.

Anywhere else, time or a buoyant economy would have ensured their demolition and replacement, or restoration and preservation in a historic precinct. Their use would perhaps be limited to art centres and antique shops, dead affairs after dark.

On St. Helena they are still being used the way they were originally intended, as shops, offices or flats. The absence of a growth economy has ensured their preservation, if not their restoration.

A wide range of accommodation is available for travellers on the island, ranging from full-service hotels to bed and breakfasts and self- catering flats and cottages.

My lodgings of choice are on Napoleon St in the centre of Jamestown. Here, in the middle of things, I can get a good feeling for the town and the island, because much of St. Helena’s daily activity seems only minutes from my door.

My interest in a supposed Napoleon connection with Canterbury had initially sparked my curiosity about the island.

A story exists that the willow trees that used to shade the old French graveyard at Akaroa were grown from cuttings taken from trees beside Napoleon’s grave on St. Helena, and that the willows along the Avon River banks in Christchurch were also from these cuttings. Commemorating this is a plaque beside the Avon in Victoria Park.

Fact or fiction?

I visit the St. Helena Records Office to see whether they have any record of a French whaler, Le Nil, visiting the island in 1837 or 1838, on its way to New Zealand.

Unfortunately, the office, although internationally famous for its records keeping, has no record of Le Nil visiting St. Helena, but visits by whalers, known as the vagabonds of the ocean, were often unscheduled and unrecorded. So the jury is still out on that issue, for a while, I think.

After visiting Napoleon’s house at Longwood and his grave site, I can report that there are no longer any willows growing beside the grave. Nor are there any remains of Napoleon. They were repatriated to France in 1840.

Apparently there were willows - Salix bonapartea - and numerous early images of the grave site confirm this, but they had died out by 1870. Over-enthusiastic souvenir hunters had destroyed the trees.

I had an idea of taking cuttings from a willow growing beside the Avon and bringing them to St. Helena, where I could plant them at the grave site and so repatriate the strain, creating a true willow link between Canterbury, New Zealand, and St. Helena.

But when I put the idea to Michel Martineau, the French consul on St. Helena, he was Gallically unimpressed. The willow link between New Zealand and St. Helena is inconsequential as far as he is concerned. “There are hundreds of these stories,” he mutters into the phone. “They are nothing! Europe and North America are full of willows growing from Salix bonapartea.”

Since he rules over Longwood and the grave site in the name of France on this tiny British island, his word is law.

So the willow-tree story continues to be a pretty “histoire”.

But there is another plant that most certainly links New Zealand with St. Helena: Phormium tenax or New Zealand flax.

For 60 years from 1907, New Zealand flax ensured the economic prosperity of the island. It was planted, grown and processed into fibre for the British Post Office.

Synthetic fibres killed off the industry in 1966, and as a result, St. Helena was thrust into economic stagnation, from which it has never recovered. Indeed, it is now an economic liability for the British Government. The Empire bites back, as it were.

But the flax plant itself certainly wasn’t killed off. It continues to thrive in the ideal subtropical climate, and has started to choke indigenous plants.

Economic hope on the island now rests on tourism, the international economic backstop when all else fails. But that won’t happen until the airport issue is sorted out. Annual tourist numbers now amount to about 1000 a year, so tourism is hardly a growth industry, and if the airport is finally built, one of the island’s major tourist attractions - its remoteness - will be lost.

However, for those who can reach the island, St. Helena offers great opportunities for hiking and climbing amid an amazing variety of landscape and flora, considering that the total land area amounts to only about 120 square kilometres. Within a couple of hours, one can walk from semi-desert to lush rainforest. Much of the landscape reminds me of New Zealand, especially when I see the flax bushes and native cabbage trees waving in the breeze.

On one of my journeys of exploration on the island, I come across a most unexpected artefact: flax machinery hidden away in an old shed down a steep valley.

Wiping away the dust, I note the manufacturer’s name on the machine: Booth MacDonald, Christchurch.

Another Canterbury connection is maritime: steering gear of a ship sticking out of the water in the Jamestown harbour.

It is attached to the wreck of the SS Papanui, destroyed in a fire in 1911 on a voyage from Britain to Australia.

The 350 passengers were all saved, and the “Saints” sheltered them until another ship came by and picked them up.

The event is commemorated on a brass plaque fixed to the wall of the Jamestown library.

As I prepare to farewell the little island that has been my home for eight days and board the boat that will take me back to the RMS St. Helena, I am amazed by how one can travel for a month and many thousands of kilometres to one of the Earth’s remotest places and still find connections with Canterbury.

St. Helena was also used by the British to exile Zulu chief Dinizulu in the late 19th century and up to 6000 Boer prisoners at the turn of the 20th century from the South African War.