STUNNING CLOUD SWIRLS SPOTTED BY SATELLITE

Our Amazing Planet (livescience.com) 27^th November 2012

Alone in the South Atlantic Ocean sits the small volcanic island of Saint Helena. The towering peak of the island disrupts clouds as they pass overhead, creating swirling patterns called von Karman vortices that can be seen by satellites overhead.

The swirling clouds, moving to the northwest over Saint Helena, were snapped by NASA’s Terra satellite on Nov. 15, 2012, according to NASA’s Earth Observatory.

Von Karman vortices are created when a mass of fluid, such as water or air, encounters an obstacle, and creates swirls going in alternating directions. These so-called “Von Karman streets” can be seen in satellite photographs of clouds around the world.

Saint Helena is dominated by Mount Actaeon, which reaches up to 2,680 feet (818 meters), according to the CIA World Fact Book. It’s part of the British overseas territory that includes the islands of Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.

Nobody lived here when it was first discovered by the Portuguese in 1502. British soldiers were stationed on the island during the 17th century, according to the World Fact Book. It became well-known for being the place of Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile from 1815 until his death in 1821, but its importance as a port went down after the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869.

N.A.S.A.

The N.A.S.A. website also carried this image, with the following text:

Cloud Vortices Off Saint Helena Island

NASA’s Terra satellite passed over the South Atlantic Ocean on Nov. 15, 2012, allowing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer instrument flying aboard to capture this true-colour image of St. Helena Island and the band of wind-blown cloud vortices trailing towards the island’s leeward side.

St. Helena Island is a tiny island lying approximately 1,860 kilometres (1,156 miles) west of Africa. Volcanic in origin, it has rugged topography with steep, sharp peaks and deep ravines. Wind, which can blow unimpeded for hundreds of miles across the ocean, strikes the face of the mountains, and is forced around the unyielding terrain. As it blows around the island, the air spins on the leeward side, much like a flowing river forms eddies on the downriver side of a piling. The spinning wind forms intricate - and mathematically predictable - patterns. When clouds are in the sky, these beautiful patterns become visible from above.

Credit: NASA/GSFC/Jeff Schmaltz/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team

See the full cloud vortices image… (400Kb)

FAMILY START NEW LIFE ON REMOTE ISLAND

By Ian Smith, The Berwick Advertiser 25^th November 2012

ANYONE who considers north Northumberland to be remote and isolated should perhaps think again when they hear that a Berwick family have emigrated to St. Helena.

Ellenor and John with children William Alec and Isabelle all packed and ready for a huge adventure. The Gilchrist family are leaving Tweedmouth for Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean for the next two years.

John and Eleanor Gilchrist and their three children, Isabel, six, William, four and Alec, two, are spending the next two years on the tiny island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

They are well aware that they will face numerous challenges adapting to such a unique environment but they are embracing the change in lifestyle it will bring.

“I’ll not missing paying £3,500 for a season rail ticket or the commute home at night,” joked John, who works for Audit Scotland in Edinburgh.

He has been allowed a career break to take on an auditing role with the St. Helena government to help bring its records in line with the international standard.

“We love living in Berwick and are happily settled here but this job came up which really suited what I do and will give me lots of useful experience - and at the end of the day I know I can go back to my old job in two years,” said John.

“In a way it’s the perfect time to do it,” added Eleanor. “When we come back Alec will be just about to start school and Isabel will still have a year of first school left. Hopefully we’ll be able to get them all into Tweedmouth West because it’s a really good school.”

“We’ve been told the education system on St. Helena isn’t the best, so that was our biggest concern about going there, but by doing it when they’re still young they should be able to catch up quickly when we come back.”

“With Isabel being at school already she is worried about missing her friends, but we’ve told her she’ll make lots of new friends and the old ones will still be there when we come back. She’s also be taught the English national curriculum which is good.”

Perhaps the biggest headache of all will be getting there in the first place - by an exhausting combination of rail, road, air and boat.

“We’ve already shipped a lot of our stuff out there but we’ve still got 10 suitcases - and three children - to get on a train to Oxford and across to the RAF base at Brize Norton,” said Eleanor, speaking the day before their departure.

They were then due to get a military flight to Ascension Island where they had to wait three days to catch the once every three weeks Royal Mail ship to St. Helena for a 800-mile journey that takes a further two days. “That’s the most daunting bit of the whole thing,” admitted Eleanor. “We’d known for a few months that we’d be going to St. Helena but we didn’t know when and then, all of a sudden, we were given a mid-November date.”

“In a way there’s been so much to do that there’s been no time to worry about it.”

St. Helena is a British overseas territory, measuring just 10x5 miles with a population of 4,255. It is one of the most isolated islands in the world, more than 1,200 miles away from the west coast of Africa. Its most famous resident was undoubtedly Napoleon Bonaparte who was exiled there by the British, followed by more than 5,000 Boer prisoners.

“John actually had the chance of a job on Ascension Island before this one came up but we felt it wasn’t for us as it’s mainly a military base servicing the island,” revealed Eleanor.

“On the other hand, St. Helena has its own culture and community. Because we’d already considered Ascension Island, I think when St. Helena came up is seemed far more appealing.”

They have been provided with a house in Longwood in the island’s tropical interior, with John travelling to the port capital of Jamestown for work.

“We’ve bought a second hand car so we can get around,” said John. “It’s not that far for me to get to work but it’ll still take a while as the speed limit is 30mph because of the twisty roads!”

“We’re expecting a much slower pace of life which is one of the things I’m looking forward to,” added Eleanor. “It’ll be nice to have John home after work at a more reasonable time so we can have dinner together as a family.”

They have been advised that some things are not easy to get while others are more expensive on St. Helena.

“It’s incredibly remote and everything that comes on to the island arrives on the Royal Mail ship which travels via Cape Town and Ascension Island so there will be items that are hard to come by,” said Eleanor.

“Children’s clothing is one of the things we’ve been told about so we’ve stocked up on the next size up for them,” she said.

“Food-wise it should be quite good. They have corner shop type stores rather than supermarkets so we’ve been told it will be a ?little bit more expensive than we’re used to. And we won’t be able to get things like strawberries unless they’re grown on the island.”

“We’ve taken pretty much everything we could want during the time we’re there, including things like Christmas presents.”

The weather they will arrive to will also be welcomed, especially as the UK enters winter.

“With it being in the southern hemisphere they’re just entering spring so it’s a good time to go,” said Eleanor. “They don’t really have extremes of temperature there; I’ve been told it’s a bit like a warm version of the UK but without the winter!”

Both John and Eleanor seem to be remarkably composed about the adventure that awaits their young family.

John said: “I’m totally up for whatever happens. I want to see what life on St. Helena is like and am looking forward to the change of pace; just going with the flow really.”

Eleanor added: “There’s something not quite real about it at the moment. Maybe once we get those 10 suitcases off the train at Oxford we’ll be able to put our minds more to what we’re going to face there!”

The pair admit they are going to miss Berwick where they have lived for the past four years.

“We’ve made some lovely friends,” said Eleanor. “I belong to the Take Note choir which I really enjoy and I’ll miss my weekly get-togethers with a group of mums but it’s only temporary.”

“We have a great adventure ahead of us and it’s our intention to throw ourselves into it. It’s going to be a brilliant experience.”

===

ST. HELENA FACTBOX

• Its nearest neighbour is Ascension Island 810 miles away.
• Population 4,255
• The port of Jamestown is the capital
• Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled here by the British, as were more than 5,000 Boer prisoners
• Britain’s second oldest overseas territory (after Bermuda)
• Discovered by the Portuguese in 1502
• For centuries, it was an important stopover for ships sailing to Europe from Asia and South Africa
• The climate is tropical, marine and mild, rarely dropping below 17C in Jamestown
• The island is set to gets its first airport in 2015 thanks to a £200m investment by the UK government
• 
  

WORKING LIVES: MANAGING HOUSING ON THE ISLAND OF ST. HELENA

The Guardian 1^st November 2012

Jamestown, capital of the remote Atlantic island of St. Helena. Photograph: Derry Brabbs/Alamy

“Amazing”, “wonderful”, “wow”, “great result”, “incredible”. It’s hard to imagine any housing job attracting such superlatives, but that’s how my normally sober friends from the now defunct Audit Commission reacted to my new posting as housing executive for the south Atlantic island of St. Helena. And apart from astronaut or rock star, I can’t imagine any job deserving it.

Mind you, not all comments were so effusive: “sounds really interesting if that’s what you want” was typical of well-meaning friends who don’t share my enthusiasm for housing and travel. Others enjoyed the irony of me having turned down a housing policy manager post in London because I didn’t want to commute, only to end up in one of the remotest places on the planet - five days by boat from Cape Town or three days from Ascension Island, if you can get there.

Discovered by the Portuguese and settled by the East India Company and freed slaves, St. Helena is a volcanic island with a population of 4,255 and located more than 1,200 miles (1,931km) from south west coast of Africa. The island’s economy has been on a downward trajectory since the growth of air travel. The loss of trade has been matched only by the exodus of young people seeking work and a living wage.

This is now set to change: a huge airport investment, a five-star hotel and the unique attractions of the island look set to reverse the trend. St. Helena is a microcosm of Costa Rica, with its 400 native species, incredible geography and with its capital city’s high street made up of listed Georgian buildings. It’s being shortlisted for world heritage status - just so long as there are homes for the hundreds of people who will now be attracted to stay and return to the island. This is where I come in.

As housing executive I have responsibility for improving the existing housing stock, developing new homes and even new communities. The most exciting part of the job is that there is a blank sheet of paper when it comes to housing legislation and housing management. St. Helena has had very little of either.

This is not, thank goodness, about imposing UK practices on the island. It’s pretty clear to everyone that the UK model has failed: we’ve failed to develop the number of homes we need, the planning system continues to move at the pace of a supertanker and localism places even more weight in favour of the haves over the have nots. The result is that house prices are way beyond the means of all but a few first-time buyers, homelessness is rising fast and the housing benefit bill is going through the roof.

There really could be an alternative. It’s all about land use since that affects land prices and, in turn, housing costs. Shielding housing prices from the ravages of inflation is the way to make housing affordable for local people in perpetuity.

At the same time, international investment and luxury homes are essential for future development. We have an opportunity to get the right balance between social rents, incomes and the benefits system.

Unfortunately the UK agenda appears to be to force up social rents so high that nobody earning a half decent income will want to rent, to privatise the housing associations now that they are earning huge surpluses and to continue to reduce benefits to such a level that anyone who can’t get a job feels the pain. What I’d also rather avoid are the convoluted and costly financial models being developed to make a broken system work.

St. Helena is a special case, with the challenges of climate, terrain, supplies and local people naturally wary of an unknown face. Then there is the unique natural environment, with 400 indigenous species including the wirebird and the world’s oldest known living creature, Jonathan the giant tortoise.

No wonder Charles Darwin liked it so much. The volcano last erupted several million years ago, which may or may not be a good thing. I am hoping that neither it nor the local people will have cause to erupt at my arrival.

Andy Crowe is housing executive for the government of St. Helena. You can follow Andy’s progress on his South Atlantic blog.

ST. HELENA: SAILING TO THE SOUTH ATLANTIC OUTPOST WHERE NAPOLEON SAW OUT HIS DAYS

By John Carter, Daily Mail 7^th October 2012

The afternoon sun beat down from a cloudless sky upon the canopies shielding the tables outside the Jamestown waterfront coffee shop. I was glad of their shade, and the protection of a generous coating of factor 15.

It may have been February 25, but it was definitely a day for sun cream, dark glasses, a polo shirt and shorts.

At a nearby table, a group of English twentysomething dancers from a cruise ship moored offshore were trying to get a signal on their mobiles. They stared in disbelief when I told them mobiles don’t work on the island. ‘What sort of weird place is this?’ one of the girls inquired.

I should have told her it is the kind of ‘weird’ place where everyone speaks English, and drives on the proper side of the road. Where the time is the same as at home, the banknotes and coins are virtually identical and on a par with Sterling.

And where mobile phones don’t work. So, what’s not to like about the sub-tropical island of St. Helena? Yes, St. Helena. Most people aren’t sure where it is - I had to look it up before my trip - but they probably know it as the island where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled and died. It also happens to be about the most isolated place on the planet, but that is about to change. Which is why I was there.

St. Helena is a lump of British territory a little larger than Guernsey, sitting in the South Atlantic south of the Equator, 1,945 miles north-west of Cape Town, from where the Royal Mail Ship St. Helena sails. At present, she is the only way to get to the island.

However, St. Helena island is going to have an airport. Work has already started and the 6,000ft runway and terminal building on Prosperous Bay Plain is due to receive its first flight by the end of 2015.

To say the 4,000 ‘Saints’ - as the locals are known - have mixed feelings about this is an understatement. Some can’t wait to get into the 21^st Century, while others fear for the environment and wildlife (some of which is unique to St. Helena) and how the development of tourism will affect the island’s easy-going lifestyle.

There is good reason to be cautious - look what happened to the Portuguese Algarve following the opening of Faro airport in the Sixties - but St. Helena is a gem that deserves to be seen and enjoyed. And an increase in visitors will certainly boost a flagging economy - you don’t get rich exporting coffee and tuna.

St. Helena’s volcanic origin means that many of its 47 square miles are pretty steep. The roads are narrow and little can be done to make them easier for visiting drivers.

The island attracts mainly older South Africans and Britons, who enjoy walking and exploring its dramatic landscape, and there are several fine rambling routes.

There is excellent game fishing and unlike most Caribbean islands, you don’t have to travel out a dozen miles or more before casting your lines for tuna or marlin. I took a trip and saw not only dolphin by the score, but magnificent whale sharks, some of which swam right beneath our keel. In season, humpback whales come to a calving ground off the island.

There’s snorkelling and scuba-diving too, with 18^th Century wrecks a little way offshore.

Don’t expect a beach holiday - Sandy Bay, the island’s sole beach, is made of black volcanic sand, and one cannot swim off it because of a fierce undertow.

And then there is the Napoleon connection. Four months after his defeat at Waterloo, Napoleon arrived on St. Helena and stayed at a property called The Briars from October 1815 until December, when he moved to Longwood, a larger house. He died there in May 1821 and was buried on the island. In 1840 his remains were returned to France, but you can still visit the site of his tomb.

The Briars and Longwood are owned by the French government (there is a French consul), open to visitors and worth seeing.

I stayed at Farm Lodge, at Rosemary Plain, some distance from Jamestown, the island’s capital. Built in about 1690 as a planter’s house, it is now owned and run as a boutique hotel by Steve Biggs and Maureen Jonas and is absolutely first-class. I also stayed at the Wellington House Hotel in Jamestown. I had a comfortable room and excellent meals, but there were no en suite facilities.

I have some very special memories of my visit. Lunch with His Excellency the Governor is joint top of the list - along with meeting Jonathan, the tortoise in the garden of his official residence, who is reckoned to be about 200 years old and, according to the vet, still ‘at it’ with two other venerable tortoises.

I also enjoyed a visit to the island’s distillery, whose owner Paul Hickling told me about Tungi, a local drink made from prickly pear cactus.

In St James’s Church - ‘the oldest Anglican Church in the Southern Hemisphere’ - I made a note of memorial tablets to a two-year old orphan who died at sea ‘of a lingering and wasting sickness which yielded to no human remedy’, and to George Singer, a ‘worthy and good servant’ who met his end by being ‘accidentally precipitated from off Egg Island’. Egg is off the coast of St. Helena.

Then it was time to sail to Cape Town. Which brings me back to RMS St. Helena. Launched in 1989, she is a fine vessel, taking just 128 passengers, and one of the last mail ships in service. The six-day voyage is run like a minicruise with quiz evenings, deck games and a cricket match between crew and passengers for the South Atlantic Curry Cup, which the crew always win.

When the airport opens, the mail ship will lose her Government subsidy and her future is uncertain. I hope she will be replaced, as for plenty of people the sea trip is a vital part of the superb St. Helena experience.

Apart from the airport - costing £200 million - the largest project is a £50 million plan for a 63 bedroom, five-star hotel and an 18-hole golf course.

At present, the island is a part-time tourist destination. But if the decision-makers keep a tight rein on development, the Saints are on to a winner. Especially if they fix it so mobiles still don’t work.

Travel facts

A 22-day package to St. Helena costs from £2,521 per person. The Explorer Tour package includes two nights in Cape Town (pre- and post-voyage), a voyage aboard RMS St. Helena in a T2H Cabin on A Deck, and eight nights in St. Helena. International flights to Cape Town and accommodation there are not included.

Rates at Farm Lodge Country House Hotel cost from £65pp per night, based on two sharing. Half-board costs from £93pp per night.

Rates at the Wellington House Hotel start from £33.50pp per night on a bed-andbreakfast basis, based on two sharing. Rooms are not en suite.

For more information on the island and on RMS St. Helena, call 020 7575 6480 or visit rms-st-helena.com.

SAINT HELENA: MIXED REACTIONS OVER AIRPORT PLANS

By James Melik, Business Daily, BBC World Service, 15^th August 2012

Issuing stamps has been a big money-spinner for the island

The news that an airport is being built on the volcanic island of Saint Helena has been greeted with mixed emotions.

The British territory, with a population of 4,000, is located in the middle of South Atlantic Ocean - and its residents are known as Saints.

It is one of most remote islands in the world, situated between Angola and Brazil, and the only way to get there is by ship from either Ascension Island or Cape Town in South Africa.

“The airport will improve access and enable tourism to develop,” says Julian Morris, chief executive for economic development on the island.

However, that is precisely what some islanders do not want.

“We will just become a destination at the end of another strip of Tarmac,” laments one Saint, who prefers to remain anonymous because feelings are running high between supporters and opponents of the project.

Mr Morris admits that people cannot agree on everything all of the time, but points to a referendum when islanders overwhelmingly voted for the airport

“The project is properly mandated,” he insists, whereas disgruntled Saints believe the referendum was slanted in the government’s favour.

Replacing funding

“The plan does not involve the island becoming an off-shore financial centre”
Julian Morris
CEO economic development

The current British coalition government has revived plans to build an airport on the island over the next four years.

Some question the validity of spending £250m in times of austerity, but the UK government says it will lead to saving because it currently spends £25m annually to keep the island solvent, and that funding will eventually be dropped.

“At the moment, the island cannot improve its financial situation because of its remoteness,” says Mr Morris.

He maintains that an airport will not only increase tourism, but it will also enable activities such as deep-sea fishing to develop.

“The plan does not involve the island becoming an off-shore financial centre,” he insists.

“We want to increase tourism for discerning people, not as a mass market destination,” he says.

He also notes that for a small island, measuring 16km by 8km (10 miles by five miles), developing its tourism sector sustainability is very important.

Previously, the main source of income for the island was flax, until the closure of the island’s flax mills in 1965.

The industry declined because of transportation costs and competition from synthetic fibres, while the decision by the British Post Office to use synthetic fibres for its mailbags was a further blow.

Rich history

Saint Helena is Britain’s second oldest remaining overseas territory, after Bermuda, and has a colourful history.

The remoteness of the island is one of the main attractions for people looking for something different

In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the English East India Company a charter to govern Saint Helena and the following year the company fortified the island and colonised it.

The British later used the island as a place of exile, most notably for Napoleon Bonaparte - although the Zulu king Cetewayo was also incarcerated there following his defeat in the Boer Wars.

The Saint Helena tourist industry is heavily based on the promotion of Napoleon’s imprisonment.

Saint Helena also gains significant income by issuing its own postage stamps.

Unpredictable change

The airport is expected to create between 500-700 new jobs, which should allow the island to become more self-sufficient.

Ivy Yon runs a bed and breakfast establishment and is worried that accommodation standards on the island might not be up to scratch if there is a big influx of visitors.

“I don’t know how we will cope with the numbers,” she says, while remarking that there is little room to build hotels in Jamestown and, even if there was, it would spoil the look of the island’s capital.

“We will probably end up cleaning toilets and it will be the inward investors who profit the most”
Unhappy islander

“If the hotels have to be built in the countryside, it will spoil the natural beauty that has attracted visitors to the island in the first place.”

There are also concerns as to whether the electricity and water supplies could cope with an increase in numbers.

The unhappy Saint who spoke to the BBC believes the British island in the tropics already caters to a niche market.

“It is ideal for people over 50,” he says, “When they have handed over the reins of a business to someone younger and have time on their hands.”

He says at the moment they can enjoy the leisurely boat trip to and from Cape Town, whereas everywhere now has an airport.

“You can now travel up the Amazon and to the Antarctic,” he says, adding that mass tourism will change the dynamics of the island dramatically.

He is also sceptical about the number of jobs which will be created when the airport is built.

“We will probably end up cleaning toilets and it will be the inward investors who profit the most,” he says.

Furthermore, when planes start landing on the island, the ship will stop running, which will cut down on the amount of freight which can be carried to the island.

“I have to ask how many cars or concrete you can fit into a plane,” he says with hint of sarcasm.

NAPOLEON’S HALTING ENGLISH ON SHOW IN AUCTION LETTER

Napoleon’s teacher said only he could understand the emperor’s English

BBC News, Europe, 5^th June 2012

A rare letter written by the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in English has gone on show in Paris.

The letter will be auctioned this weekend, and is expected to fetch up to 80,000 euros (£65,000; $100,000){2}.

The emperor wrote it in March 1816 from exile on the island of Saint Helena.

He was determined to learn the language of his British captors, but the letter shows he had not quite the mastery he would have liked, says the BBC’s Hugh Schofield in Paris.

The yellowed sheet of paper is one of three written from St. Helena, where Napoleon lived in exile after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo.

Just after arriving there, Napoleon started daily English lessons given by his aide, Emmanuel, the Comte de las Cases.

Boredom was a spur, as well as a desire to understand what was being communicated around him.

The ex-emperor was a keen student, and soon, when he could not sleep at night, he took to writing short letters to his teacher.

His prose is not always easy for modern English speakers to understand.

“Count Las Case. It is two o’clock after midnight, I have enow [enough] sleep, I go then finish the night into to cause with you,” begins the letter.

It goes on: “He shall land above seven day, a ship from Europe that we shall give account from anything who this shall have been even to day of first January thousand eight hundred sixteen.”

“You shall have for this ocurens a letter from Lady Las Case that shall you learn what himself could carry well if she had conceive the your occurens. But I tire myself and you shall have of the ado at conceive my.”

The auction will take place in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, on Sunday.

Comment by BBC News:

Apparently the emperor’s pronunciation of English was even worse than his written English. The comte said it was like a completely new language, which only he, the teacher, could understand. Still, you have to admire the panache. It was like a last bold charge at the English - but, like at Waterloo, one that did not quite come off.

Update:

The letter actually sold at auction for €325,000

‘I HAVE ENOW SLEEP, I GO THEN FINISH THE NIGHT INTO TO CAUSE WITH YOU’

By Suzannah Hills, The Daily Mail, 6^th June 2012

Rare letter written in English by the French emperor Napoleon reveals his struggle to master the language

A rare letter written by the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte while in exile after his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo has revealed his struggle to master the English language.

It is one of only three letters written by the emperor in March 1816 while he was held by English captors on the island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean.

In broken English, he wrote: “Count Las Case. It is two o’clock after midnight, I have enow sleep, I go then finish the night into to cause with you.”

Keen student: Napoleon, depicted in a portrait painting (left), and the TV programme Clash of the Generals (right), attempted to learn English while in exile following the battle of Waterloo

The emperor is attempting to convey that he has had enough sleep and wishes to chat - but instead muddles the word with the French phrase ‘causer’, which has the same meaning.

The letter has gone on show in Paris and is expected to sell for 80,000 euros when it goes up for sale this weekend{2}.

Napoleon was determined to learn the language of his captors and underwent daily lessons with his aide, Emmanuel, the Comte de las Cases, so he could understand what was being said around him.

The emperor was an enthusiastic student and often wrote to his teacher in English when he couldn’t sleep to practice.

But this letter shows the emperor was a long way off mastering the language - and it is said his spoken English was even worse.

Broken English: In the rare letter, Napoleon reveals his difficulty in mastering the language

The emperor continues: “He shall land above seven day, a ship from Europe that we shall give account from anything who this shall have been even to day of first January thousand eight hundred sixteen. You shall have for this ocurens a letter from Lady Las Case that shall you learn what himself could carry well if she had conceive the your occurens. But I tire myself and you shall have of the ado at conceive my.”

The auction will take place in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, on Sunday.

Collectable: The rare letter by Napoleon, played here by Vladislav Strzhelchik in the 1969 film War and Peace, is expected to fetch up to £65,000 at auction

JT Comment:

There was also a version of the story in the (UK) Indepdendent newspaper, but after ten minutes of waiting for the page to finish downloading, having said no to all twenty popups advertising things or asking me to respond to surveys, I gave up. If you have superfast broadband and about an hour to spare it’s here:www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/letter-written-by-napoleon-in-english-may-fetch-80000-7818026.html

CRICKET FEVER SWEEPS ST. HELENA

David Millward, The Daily Telegraph, 7^th May, 2012

Cricket fever is sweeping St. Helena a volcanic outcrop in the South Atlantic best known as the island where Napoleon was exiled.

A heroes’ welcome awaits the St. Helena team, which has just won its first ever international match, beating Cameroon by nine wickets, when it comes home next weekend.

With a population of just under 4,000, the odds have been stacked against the “Saints” even though cricket has been played on the island since a local league was founded in 1903 by Honourable Humphrey Solomon, a local businessman.

The sport has had a interesting and even tragic history on the island with a soldier on the army garrison plunging to his death after trying to head off a boundary by chasing a ball to the edge of a cliff.

Even sending a team to South Africa was a feat in itself given the isolation of St. Helena, which can only be reached by ship, the RMS St. Helena, which arrives every couple of weeks.

The islanders raised £24,000 to cover the cost of sending them to the tournament, with the team putting their five days on the mail ship to good use by thrashing the crew in matches played with a rope ball.

This was the second time that St. Helena had been invited to participate in a 20 over cricket tournament.

But last time it had to turn the invitation down because it was impossible to tie up the trip with the ship’s sailing schedule.

This time, however, it was able send a team with the star of the team being Gavin George, 57, who was joined by his son David, 33. The youngest team member is only 15.

There was still the odd hurdle to be overcome before the Saints could make their international debut.

Participating in a “pyjama cricket” tournament, the team discovered to its horror that it did not have green wicketkeeper pads.

This was rectified with a swift and judicious application of a coat of green paint.

The tournament could not have started better with the Saints skittling out Cameroon for 36 runs and knocking off the required total for the loss of only one wicket.

“It was overwhelming ,” said Gavin George, “It was very emotional, this was our first game away from St. Helena.”

Formerly an all-rounder, Mr George is now a batsman, though he bowls occasionally. In another historic first the Georges both hit the highest score recorded by a St. Helena batsmen in the same match, 48 runs each against Gambia.

In the tournament St. Helena beat Cameroon, Mali, Gambia and Morocco. It also lost to Morocco as well as being defeated by Zambia, Rwanda and the Seychelles.

Cricket is in the Georges’ blood. Gavin George’s parents and grandparents were enthusiasts.

Even Mr George’s wife, Barbara, has caught the bug, acting as secretary for the Association, where she has been able to keep up with the news of the team’s latest triumph thanks to phone calls and the internet.

“The vibe on the island is incredibly high,” she said . This is the first international tournament they have ever played in and when we compare the demographics of the large African countries to our 46 square miles of St. Helena with under 4000 people here and an ageing population.

“We have shown that there is natural sporting ability here and with training we can compete in the international arena.”