GLASGOW 2014: ST. HELENA FINALLY ARRIVE AT COMMONWEALTH GAMES

By Saj Chowdhury, BBC Sport in Glasgow, 23^rd July 2014

A Royal Mail ship, two flights, 8,500 miles and 10 days of travelling - the St. Helena team’s route to Glasgow 2014 has been nothing short of epic.

St. Helena is a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean which has a population of only about 4,000.

The party of eight, six athletes and two officials, set off on a five-day crossing to Cape Town on 11^th July and stopped off for three days before arriving, via Amsterdam, on Monday.

“It has been all-out, non-stop travelling,” said 22-year-old badminton player Lee Yon, who did short running bursts on the RMS St. Helena to keep fit. “It took 10 days to get here.”

Yon’s team manager Nick Stevens said: “I got him to do some shadow play, so he was doing his strokes without the racquet and the shuttle on the top deck, similar to shadow boxing. But the area to practise in was not even the size of a badminton court.”

Since 1989, St. Helena has relied on RMS St. Helena, a cargo-passenger ship and one of the last remaining Royal Mail ships, for transportation of people and goods. However, from 2016 it will have its own airport.

“That will make it a lot easier for us to compete,” added Yon.

St. Helena at the Commonwealth Games: This is their sixth CWG - they have yet to win a medal; St. Helena will be competing in the swimming, badminton and shooting

See also: Sport in St. Helena

BRITAIN’S LAST OVERSEAS TERRITORIES HOME TO MORE THAN 1,500 UNIQUE SPECIES

Spiky Yellow Woodlouse getting world famous{a}

The Independent Wednesday 21^st May 2014, by Cahal Milmo

Britain’s remaining colonial possessions - stretching from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean - are teeming with unique animal species ranging from a spiky woodlouse to a shrimp confined to two mid-Atlantic rock pools, according to a study.

The first comprehensive survey of wildlife on the 14 Overseas Territories from Montserrat to the Chagos Islands found more than 1,500 animals and plants which are unique to their surroundings and found nowhere else on earth.

The findings mean that the islands outside the United Kingdom mainland are home to nearly 95 per cent of all uniquely “British” species. Experts at the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), which was commissioned by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to conduct the research, said it was possible a further 2,000 unique or endemic species exist in the territories.

The unique creatures already known to exist include the Cahow, a dove-sized seabird found only in Bermuda and thought extinct for 300 years until it was rediscovered in 1951, and a flightless moth recently discovered on Tristan da Cunha in the southern Atlantic.

But the researchers warned that many of the species are extraordinarily rare and work needs to be done to assess their conservation status. Among the rarest creatures are the Ascension Island predatory shrimp, which exists in just two rock pools, and the spiky yellow woodlouse, of which just 90 individuals have been found on St. Helena.

Jonathan Hall, of the RSPB, said: “Because there has been no assessment of these unique British species, we have no idea how they are faring: they could be thriving, or hurtling off a cliff. We simply don’t know, but we urgently need to find out.”

St. Helena, the volcanic outcrop in the middle of the Atlantic used to imprison Napoleon, was found to contain the highest number of endemic species with 502 unique animals and plants, followed by Bermuda, with 321.

Anguilla in the Caribbean had fewest with five, followed by the British Indian Ocean Territory, better known as the Chagos Islands, with nine.

Editor’s Note

We tried to find this article on www.independent.co.uk but failed. Their search just didn’t work and the pages were to slow and too illogically categorised to search manually. So this copy comes from the St. Helena Independent.

See also: Endemic Species

‘LIBERTY BOUND’ EXHIBITION SHOWCASES THE FIRST ARCHEOLOGIST JOURNEY TO ST. HELENA

BayTV, Liverpool 3^rd April 2014 By Gaelle LeGrand

Exploring the concept of freedom through the journey of slaves on St. Helena: the new exhibition of the International Slavery Museum, ‘Liberty Bound’, lands on this tiny island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

This remote place, located more than 1,200 miles away from the nearest coast, has been a stopover for many ships since the 17^th century.

More than 200 hundred years later, a team of archeologists decided to reach the island and explore the remains of this place where hundreds of people were made slaves.

Dr Andrew Pearson, Historian and Archeologist in Cardiff and at Bristol University, led the team over the island to pursue his researches. He said: “ We expected to find very little. St. Helena is known as the place for Napoleon Bonaparte’s exile from 1815 to 1821.

“We were the first archeologists ever to work on the island, and beyond Napoleon, there wasn’t anything that much known about the island.

“What we found in Rupert’s Valley were an enormous number of bodies of African slaves freed by the Royal Navy in the 1840’s and the 1850’s, but within very small dense areas of burials and graveyards, so it was quite of a macabre find but a very significant one.”

“Millions of African were shipped across the Atlantic between the 15^th and the 19^th century, but you can’t see it, you can’t touch it, you can only read about it. That’s quite an abstract experience.

“Here, in Rupert’s Valley, we’ve excavated 325 of African bodies, who were quite literally, straight off the slave ship.

“So you come face to face with the victims and that’s an extraordinarily powerful thing to face. Children, young mothers, young adults, all essentially killed by the slave trade.

The team also found artefacts belonging to the slaves who had been buried on their arrival in St. Helena.

Dr Pearson said: “It also personalise it. In the exhibition, we have thousands of glass beads, which were worn as earrings or necklaces, we have bracelets. We start to see people as people, who have a sense of beauty, of their own esthetics, a sense of their own identity.”

Saint Helena, which was discovered in 1502 by Joao da Nova, a Portuguese navigator, moved to the hands of the English East India Company in 1657. The island is considered as a gem on both historical and cultural levels.

Dr Pearson said: “Saint Helena is an extraordinary place, first of all by the fact that you can only reach it by boat. The thing that appealed to me is that it’s not fragmented. Because there has been so little development, it all still joins up, it’s all a whole.

St. Helena is now part of the British Overseas Territory. The British government has invested £250,000 in the construction of an airport on the island, an operation that led to the discovering of the slaves’ remains. The airport is meant to bring 30,000 tourists every year on St. Helena.

See also: Slaves and slavery

MEET JONATHAN, ST. HELENA’S 182-YEAR-OLD GIANT TORTOISE

BBC 13^th March 2014 By Sally Kettle, St. Helena

Our world is full of weird and wonderful creatures, many of which amaze scientists and non-scientists, alike. But is it true that a living tortoise could have started its life in the first half of the 19^th Century?

Plantation House in St. Helena sits proud amid gumwood trees alive with chirps and whistles.

It is the official residence of Mark Capes, Governor of the British Overseas Territories in the South Atlantic. I have not come to see the governor, nor the large brown hillocks which dot the pristine lawns.

It’s only when my guide Joe Hollis, the sole vet on the island, bangs on a large metal bowl, that all becomes clear. The hillocks rise and trot surprisingly swiftly towards us.

Meet Jonathan, Myrtle and Fredrika, three of five giant tortoises who live on St. Helena. Their shy friends David and Emma are hiding in the rough.

“He is virtually blind from cataracts, has no sense of smell - but his hearing is good,” Joe tells me. At 182, Jonathan may be the oldest living land creature.

Jonathan, a Boer War prisoner, and a guard, around 1900

Jonathan is a rare Seychelles Giant. His lawn-fellows hail from the Aldabra Atoll in the Indian Ocean. Aldabra Giants number about 100,000, but only one small breeding population of Seychelles tortoises exists.

Map of Ascension, St. Helena and Tristan Da Cuhna

St. Helena was born as a violent volcano, and along with Ascension and Tristan du Cunha in the South Atlantic, is famed for its isolation and close-knit society. Jamestown, its capital, became a centre of commerce for the East India Company in the 17^th Century.

Many victims of the slave trade - sick and dying - would spend their final hours on the shores of St. Helena. And then there was Napoleon, in exile.

Its inhabitants, known as Saints, share this complex past, and ethnic traits of Africans, Americans, Europeans and Chinese.

Nobody knows why Jonathan ended up in St. Helena.

During the 17^th Century ships could contain hundreds of easily-stacked tortoises, like a fast-food takeaway. In the Galapagos islands alone around 200,000 tortoises are thought to have been killed and eaten at this time.

How did Jonathan avoid this fate?

Maybe he became a curio for Hudson Janisch, governor in the 1880s.

Thirty-three governors have come and gone since then, and nobody wants Jonathan to die on their watch. Mr Capes is certainly keen “that he should be treated with the respect, attention and care he surely deserves”.

A photograph taken in 1882 shows Jonathan at his full size, and it can take 50 years to reach that physical maturity.

The years since haven’t always been kind. Tourists would often do whatever it took to get “that” photo.

Now, a viewing corridor runs along the bottom of the lawn to keep overzealous sightseers at bay. It was a huge privilege for me to get so up close and personal.

Jonathan loves having his neck stroked. His head extends out from his shell to a surprising length.

He snaps for his food - bananas, cabbage and carrots - with some ferocity. Joe almost lost the end of his thumb and has resorted to wearing thick gloves.

“He doesn’t mean to nip me,” he says, “he just finds it difficult to locate his food.”

Tortoises scrape at the grass with their horny beaks, made from keratin, like nails.

More on Jonathan

Seychelles giant tortoises can weigh up to 300kg (660 lbs) and grow to be 1.3m (4 ft) long

Jonathan’s life has spanned eight British monarchs from George IV to Elizabeth II, and 51 prime ministers

It is thought Jonathan was brought to St. Helena from the Seychelles as a mature adult in 1882

If it’s correct that he is 182 years old that would make him about 10 years too young to have met Napoleon, who died in 1821, even if he had spent his whole life on St. Helena

Blindness made it hard for Jonathan to find the right vegetation, and due to malnutrition Jonathan’s beak became blunt and soft, adding to his problems finding food.

Now there’s a new feeding regime, in place where Joe delivers a bucket of fresh fruit and vegetables every Sunday morning.

With this extra nutritional boost Jonathan’s skin now looks plump and feels supple.

His beak has become a deadly weapon for anyone attempting to shove a carrot anywhere near his mouth. And he can belch.

Tortoises may be slow but they are noisy, especially when they mate: “A noise like a loud harsh escape of steam from a giant battered old kettle, often rounded off with a deep oboe-like grunt.” Joe reassures me it’s another indicator of good health.

Unfortunately, Jonathan’s trysts have not produced young - thus far.

Though giant tortoises like Jonathan can live up to 250 years, the community has already drafted a detailed plan for when he finally pops his shell - dubbed “Operation Go Slow”.

It will ensure all runs smoothly when the inevitable happens, in fact his obituary has already been written.

It has also been decided that stuffing Jonathan would be a rather morbid and outdated thing to do.

Instead his shell will be preserved and will go on display in St. Helena.

The Saints would like to raise funds for a life-size bronze statue of him.

When he goes, Jonathan will be mourned by friends and admirers on St. Helena and around the world.

But to me, he is also a symbol of a remote society, soldiering on in genuine isolation.

This story was also carried by www.globalanimal.org.

See also: Jonathan the tortoise

LAST POST: QUEEN’S BATON SAILS FOR FINAL TIME TO REMOTE SAINT HELENA

BBC 27^th February 2014

The RMS St. Helena is one of the last working Royal Mail ships in the world - a lifeline for the people living on its namesake island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

Earlier this month the Queen’s Baton Relay, the Commonwealth Games’ version of the Olympic torch, travelled on a special voyage. The transport of the baton highlighted the ship’s vital role to the lives of the 4000 people who live on the British Overseas Territory, located between Africa and South America and famous for being the island of exile for Napoleon Bonaparte.

Built in Aberdeen, Scotland, in 1989 to specifically supply the island, the ship has provided everything for the islanders. However, all is about to change for the people of Saint Helena.

An airport is due to open on the island in 2016. When it becomes operational, the RMS St. Helena will be retired to the annals of maritime history.

After visiting the 18 Commonwealth countries on the African continent in January and February, the baton left Cape Town in the shadow of Table Mountain. The baton for Glasgow 2014 is the third time the ship has transported the Queen’s message for the Games.

The ship’s 2^nd officer and navigator Mia Henry posed with the baton above cargo containers full of goods to support the people of Saint Helena.

Cheddy Josan is the ship’s boatswain. He is in charge of maintaining the ship and is seen here making a new gangplank.

The RMS St. Helena looks after its crew and passengers with this work station. The emergency communication system can contact the coastguard at Falmouth on the English coast.

This station operates the stabilisers to stop the RMS St. Helena rolling in rough seas.

Third Officer Mike Gibson holds the Queen’s Baton below decks during the ship’s voyage from Cape Town to Saint Helena.

As well as being an operational cargo ship, the RMS St. Helena hosts tourists who are drawn to its unique journey. Shuffleboard is a popular pastime.

Commonwealth Games Federation Honorary Secretary General Louise Martin CBE (centre), who competed for Scotland at the 1962 Commonwealth Games in the swimming finals and was central in Glasgow’s successful bid to host this year’s event, holds the Queen’s Baton with the crew of RMS St. Helena.

The baton’s final journey on the RMS St. Helena ended here, in sight of the popular tourist destination of Jacob’s Ladder. Saint Helena is around 1,948 miles (3,135km) west of Cape Town and around 2,380 miles (3,830km) east from Fortaleza on the Brazilian coast. By the time the next Queen’s Baton Relay travels around the world in the months before the 2018 Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia, the ship will have been replaced by an airport.

See also: Sport in St. Helena • RMS St. Helena

W/BAY SHIPS GIANT CRAWLER CRANE

Informanté Namibia 23^rd January 2014, by Floris Steenkamp

At a mammoth 230 tonnes, the Liebherr LR1200 crawler crane counts among the most powerful cranes around for large construction projects.

Last week, Basil Read Mining had to ship its LR1200 from the port of Walvis Bay to the island of Saint Helena where it would be used for the construction of a permanent wharf at the island’s Rupert’s Bay. The wharf is key to the economy of the island and also instrumental for construction equipment and machinery for Basil Read Mining and Construction which also currently constructing the island’s first international airport.

The crane was dismantled into 33 separate sections and loaded onto the cargo ship NP “Glory 4”, destined for Saint Helena. The loading operations were complicated by the size of the dismantled units, as well as the sheer weight. The heaviest component of the crane, the base machine or car body, weighed in at a whopping 40 tonnes. Basil Read also loaded a truck and specially-designed flatbed trailer of Wesbank Transport on the ship, that would transport the crane on the island to the site where the crane is to be re-assembled for operations.

A temporary jetty had to be constructed by Basil Read on the island to facilitate the roll-on roll-off of discharge of cargo, including the disassembled crane units.

St. Helena Island is a British overseas territory and the airport currently constructed at the airport by Basil Read Mining and Construction is funded by the UK Department For International Development (DFID), at an estimated cost of £250 million (N$4.5 billion), including construction and operating costs for 10 years.)

It is expected that the airport be fully operational by February 2016. Apart from a major boost for tourism and downstream economic development for the island, the international airport would also be strategic for airlines operating cross Atlantic flight routes to Latin America, the Bahamas and the Southern United States. This includes using the Walvis Bay Airport as a last fuel stopover before crossing the Atlantic via the Saint Helena international airport.

Saint Helena also views Walvis Bay as a strategic point for imports and exports. A trade delegation from the island visited Walvis Bay in recent years, to discuss mutual trade and investment relations that would reach full potential once the airport construction project concludes.

See also: Fly here?

YORKSHIRE ECOLOGIST NOW OUR MAN IN ST. HELENA

Yorkshire Post 6^th January 2014

SINCE it was first discovered by the Portuguese in 1502 the remote island of St. Helena has only ever been accessible by boat. But this will change in 2016 when aircraft will begin to land at the new airport now under construction, bringing with them thousands of tourists to the British territory in the South Atlantic - a development it is hoped will transform the island’s economy and future.

But the change presents a major challenge to one Yorkshireman who lives on the island and is part of a team tasked with protecting the hundreds of species of animals and wildlife which can only be found in St. Helena.

Conservation worker Ross cutting back invasive New Zealand flax

Dave Higgins, who was born in Hull, has lived and worked around Yorkshire including jobs for Defra in Leeds and for the Yorkshire Dales Rivers Trust. However, his latest conservation job has taken him to a more exotic location on the other side of the world as he looks to safeguard the future of various “endemic” species - those which can be only be found in one place. He said:

“St. Helena can currently only be reached by ship which takes five days from Cape Town or two days from Ascension Island. Sometimes it can be just one ship a month. This will change in 2016 when an airport opens on Prosperous Bay Plain. This will be a major event in the island’s history.”

Mr Higgins said the development of the airport created two risks for conservationists both in terms of the loss of natural habitat because of construction work underway and also the large increase in the numbers of people likely to be on the island as the result of the regular air travel. He said:

“St. Helena could well be a mecca for eco-tourists. The projections suggest tourism will peak at 30,000 per annum by 2022 from a less than a 1,000 per a year which we have at present.”

Mr Higgins has been tasked with writing plans for 14 national conservation areas, include national parks, nature reserves and important wirebird areas. He said that in some cases he was dealing with rare species which could be at risk of extinction.

“St. Helena is renowned for its unique and numerous endemic plant and invertebrate species. These include the bastard gumwood tree, a cloud forest tree fern, the spiky yellow woodlouse and the golden sail spider. Many of these are critically endangered. The island’s history since discovery has been one of extinction with numerous species having disappeared due to habitat loss and non-native invasive species. The wirebird is a small plover and is now the only remaining endemic bird species on the island.”

He told the Yorkshire Post the “museum rarity” of the place which conservationists are working in was both frightening and exciting. He added:

“The 823m high summit of Diana’s Peak, which is 50 hectares of mountain range, holds more endemic species than any European country while almost half of the invertebrates living in the islands’ national parks cannot be found anywhere else in the world. To date conservationists know of 200 species of endemic invertebrate just in the peaks. Some of these are reliant on a single tree species. Many of these trees are hidden on cliffs or in ravines. Local conservationists tell me that if we lose one of our endemic plant species there could be a suite of invertebrate extinctions. Little isolated hotspots of wonder are surrounded by a sea of invasive New Zealand flax. All around these biological jewels lies the threat of non-native species and habitat loss. The island’s wonder is under constant siege.”

Mr Higgins saw the job at St. Helena advertised and was interviewed for it in London. His first journey to the island took a week as he flew from RAF Brize Norton to Ascension Island but then had to wait several days for the next ship heading on the two-day trip to St. Helena.

It is a far cry from what the Yorkshireman had been used to before he took up the role. Mr Higgins was born in Hull and lived around the region in Leeds, Hull, Cottingham, Ripon, Sutton Howgrave and Askrigg during his earlier career.

See also: Endemic Species

CHRISTMAS IN PARADISE FOR FAMILY WHO LEFT DERBYSHIRE FOR TINY ISLAND

Derby Telegraph 26^th December 2013

This year, the Troman family swapped their life in rural Derbyshire to live on one of the world’s most remote islands. Here, Tim Troman talks about the first six months of island life and spending their first Christmas there.

Tim and Sarah Troman and daughter Lucy, all formerly of Belper, are living on Saint Helena for two years

It is December and I’m sitting in our living room in shorts and a T-shirt.

The temperature is 26°C outside and there is hardly a cloud in the sky.

On the local radio station, they are playing the song Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.

But looking at the weather outside, it is really hard for me to believe that it’s Christmas.

My wife Sarah, our young daughter, Lucy, and I have now been living on the island of Saint Helena in the South Atlantic Ocean for six months.

But it only seems like yesterday that we left RAF Brize Norton, in Oxfordshire, to set off on our two-year adventure.

Initially, settling into island life was hard as we missed family and friends.

The lifestyle and pace of life is so different to the UK but now we have settled in it has become an absolute pleasure and a fantastic adventure.

Saint Helena is a wonderful island, with such diverse landscapes that just being here and experiencing it is a privilege.

Small things which we now take for granted are so special - to get up in the morning and choose bananas from the tree in our garden for Lucy to take to school still makes me smile.

Life on Saint Helena feels like when I grew up in the UK in the 1970s, with only the recent advent of the internet and television to significantly change things.

The island is a cash economy, so no debit or credit cards and no cash machines, so it’s down to the bank each week to draw out real money.

Shopping is great fun, too, as there are none of the major chain stores on Saint Helena, just lots of smaller independent shops (some of which are chain stores in their own right!), which sell anything from groceries to engine oil.

Sarah, in particular, finds the shopping opportunities limited.

There’s no Westfield just around the corner to pick up the latest fashions and somehow internet shopping is not quite the same.

We ordered some items from Tesco in September, which have only just arrived.

One of the best things about the island is the wonderful people who live here.

They are known as ‘Saints’ and they live up to that name as, ever since we arrived, everyone has made us feel so welcome and if you are ever in trouble and need a hand, someone will help you out.

For Lucy, it is the most wonderful opportunity to live in a safe, secure environment.

She reached the grand old age of three in August, at which point she started school and very quickly realised it was far more fun to have a bus journey to school with the other children each day rather than staying at home with boring Daddy.

From a personal point of view, my life has changed so much in six months.

Back in Derbyshire, I was a director of a company. I’ve gone from that to having no set structure to my day. It’s taken some getting used to.

I now volunteer two days a week in the Environmental Management Department for the Saint Helena Government.

I do another two days in school, helping the children with their reading skills.

The remaining working day of the week needs to be set aside for the weekly shopping challenge.

I think that, when we return to the UK in 2014 (for a holiday), I won’t be able to cope with all the choice of a huge supermarket.

Having all this extra time has allowed me to spend more time playing different sports.

My weekly diary now includes games of tennis, a round of golf and I have just played my first cricket match since I was eight years old. We won and I managed to score a run.

I don’t think Derbyshire County Cricket Club will be signing me up any time soon, but I am really enjoying the outdoor lifestyle.

The island also has some stunning scenery and there are a number of trails, called Post Box Walks.

They stretch across the island and vary in difficulty from “hard” to “I need to be a mountain goat to do that”.

Many of them involve ropes set into the rock to help you scramble up and down steep sections.

I’ve done a couple of these but there are lots more to try yet and anyone who enjoys walking should definitely put this on their list once the new airport opens in 2016.

Saint Helena is also a wonderful place for marine life.

Diving is a big pastime on the island and there are lots of boats offering dolphin and whale watching trips, which are just fantastic.

The sight of the dolphins putting on an acrobatic display at the side of the boat will live with me forever.

Last week, I saw my first whale. They are just beautiful creatures.

Probably the most unusual experience I have had is being allowed to do my own show on what is basically national radio.

I was asked by Saint FM Community Radio to make up my own play list of my favourite songs and choose a classic album to play tracks from.

The two hours flew by and I even had people ring in to tell me they were enjoying it.

That’s the beauty of this island, as there is no way I would have got that opportunity in the UK.

I’m going back for more over the Christmas holidays when the Saint FM Community Radio airwaves will be taken over by myself and my neighbour, who is a big Newcastle United fan, so I’m sure that the banter will be good.

Back to Christmas and I can confirm that Saint Helena most definitely enjoys this time of year.

It is the height of summer here, so the schools have four weeks off for Christmas, which is really nice as the weather now is gorgeous.

The Christmas decorations started going up in the shops in early November and they are definitely not understated.

It was also around that time that I heard the first Christmas record of the year on the radio.

I have learned a whole new raft of Christmas tunes, as the island is big on country music and there is a huge selection of classics that we are now aware of.

Lucy had her school advent service in St Paul’s Cathedral - that’s the name of the cathedral on Saint Helena and it makes me chuckle every time I say it.

There was also the school Christmas parade through the main shopping street of Jamestown, which is the island’s capital.

There was even an appearance from a jolly man in a red suit - and for the first time ever, he had a Derbyshire accent.

Finally, I would like to say happy Christmas to everyone back in the UK.

By the time you read this, we will have sat down for our barbecued turkey on Christmas Day.

It wasn’t quite the same as the traditional roast turkey with all the trimmings.

To continue to follow Tim and his family’s adventures on Saint Helena, visit his blog at www.timsjustlikelivinginparadise.com.

EXPORTING SAND TO ST. HELENA

Informanté Namibia 28^th November 2013 by Floris Steenkamp

In what could be an unprecedented economic case for Namibia, the Walvis Bay-based Baard Group secured a contract for the export of sand to the island of Saint Helena, where an international airport is currently under construction. The sand requirement includes both dune sand as well as sifted sand, from the Swakop River.

A spokesperson for the Baard Group, René Baard, confirmed the contract this week and said the company’s customer is Basil Reid Construction, which has the tender to construct the airport for Saint Helena.

Saint Helena is one of the United Kingdom’s last British Overseas Territories (BOTs). The UK government wants BOTs to be less economically dependent on the British taxpayer, and the construction of an international airport is one of the measures to stimulate foreign trade and tourism. Walvis Bay is the closest port to Saint Helena, hence the decision to source construction material from here. All machinery and equipment used in the construction project on the island is also shipped from Walvis Bay.

According to Baard, 1,000 tonnes of river sand was already exported to Saint Helena and the process is currently in progress to export a further 1,000 tonnes of dune sand. Baard explained Saint Helena Island consists largely of a rugged mountainous environment. There is no sand for large scale construction on the island. Existing agriculture soil is highly treasured for coffee and banana production.

“All services at the airport in terms of electricity, water and communications are installed in underground channels, blasted for that specific purpose. The sand is used to cover these burrows again,” Baard explained. Baard Group also casts concrete lintels for window and door frames for the airport construction project, and anticipates that more orders for sand and other construction materials would be placed in the foreseeable future.

Saint Helena international airport is scheduled to open in mid-2015 and will also accommodate flights from the Walvis Bay airport.

ST. HELENA BUILDS OWN AIRPORT

Eyewitness News 14^th November 2013 by Rafiq Wagiet

Jamestown, the capital of St. Helena Island. Picture: Wikipedia

The island of St. Helena could soon become the holiday destination of choice for Capetonians.

The tiny island in the South Atlantic will soon be getting an airport, with a direct five-hour flight to and from the Western Cape.

The airport, currently under construction, is set for completion in 2015.

St. Helena Governor Mark Capes says he hopes the airport will help to re-establish a century-old link between Cape Town and the island.

“We’ll be developing hotels, restaurants and other leisure facilities to accommodate growth in that sector. Our relationship with the Western Cape goes back over 350 years. There are close historical, family and commercial links.”

He says Capetonians can play a crucial role in growing the island’s economy.

“As we connect St. Helena with the world we look to our friends in the Cape to partner with us in developing our economy.”

AIRPORT OPENS UP OPPORTUNITIES ON ST. HELENA

MoneyWeb 7^th November 2013

Investment on the island of St. Helena will be a hot topic in Cape Town next week, during a visit of Mark Capes, governor of St. Helena, neighbouring Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.

The island, situated in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and more or less on the same degree of latitude as Luanda, is mainly accessible only by a four-day boat trip from Cape Town once a month.

Its days of isolation are however numbered.

South African construction group Basil Read is currently building St. Helena’s first ever airport and air access is expected to make all the difference.

The airport is expected to be ready in early 2016 and will open the island up for business. The St. Helena government is planning £24 million of infrastructure upgrades in the next few years in anticipation of air access. This includes electricity, water, sewage, a new wharf at Rupert’s Bay and better connectivity.

The key question now, is where flights to St. Helena will embark from. No decision has yet been taken whether flights will be from Johannesburg or Cape Town. However, the St. Helena airport will be operated by the same operator as Lanseria.

Governance, opportunites

St. Helena is a British overseas territory and English is the language spoken on the island. The currency is St. Helena Pound, which is interchangeable and on par with British Pound. St. Helena law applies, based on British Law.

About 80% of the land belongs to the island government. Freehold of up to two acres is available without any licence and bigger pockets on lease of up to 150 years.

The St. Helena government is determined to manage the island’s development in a sustainable way.

It offers several incentives including early tax breaks, zero customs duty, corporate tax and capital gains tax for seven years on investments over £1million and below £5million. For bigger investments the term is extended to ten years. Investments of more than £1million will attract a 50% discount on freight rates and those bigger than £5million also qualify for a 50% discount on passenger rates. St. Helena has no exchange control, sales tax or property tax and also no visa requirements.

Opportunities are mainly focussed on tourism, fishing and services, says Julian Morris, executive manager economic development of Enterprise St. Helena, the NGO established to promote economic growth and funded by the St. Helena government and the British government’s Department for International Development (DFID).

High value, low volume tourism is envisaged and a decision has been taken to cap the number of visitors per year at 30 000. See the graph below on who is expected to visit.

Extensive research has shown opportunities in especially heritage and culture tours. The island’s link to Napoleon is a huge point of interest. Bird watching, gaming, fishing and diving, and to a lesser extent astronomy are other niche tourism markets targeted.

On the fishing side, St. Helena has a 200 mile exclusive zone where it controls marine resources and tuna stocks are largely untouched. Fresh and frozen tuna provide opportunities as well as sports fishing, says Morris. The St. Helena government will next week be in serious talks with prospective hotel investors and parties interested in establishing a fish processing plant.

The island government is looking for hotel developers and discussions with the Mantis group and St. Helena Leisure Company on two five star hotels, one with a golf course, are at an advanced stage. At least one South African hotel group is interested in building a £8 million three or four star hotel. Investments are also sought in new boutique hotels.

Supply chain

Interested parties will also be able to get more information during an event hosted in Cape Town in conjunction with the Western Cape Destination Marketing, Investment and Trade Promotion Agency (Wesgro).

The supply chain and services to the fledgling economy need to be established and opportunities abound. Advertisements will go out for a hospitality trainer shortly, to up-skill islanders, also known as Saints. It will be a one-year contract.

The current supply line from the city, the RMS St. Helena, has significant economic value, says Nils Flaatten, CEO of Wesgro. The RMS will be decommissioned in 2016. Morris earlier said the RMS St. Helena alone, is worth £20 million for Cape Town per year. That includes island supplies, mostly purchased in Cape Town. Islanders also come to the Mother City for advanced medical treatment and the total value of the St. Helena to the Cape Town economy might be much more.

Flaatten says Wesgro is pro-actively fighting to retain all or a large portion of St. Helena’s business. “We have regular engagement with the St. Helena government and are assisting them with their interaction with investors”, he says.

A request for proposals will be issued next year for airline operators to service the route, he says. That process will determine the exact route.

I visited St. Helena earlier this year as a guest of Basil Read. The island is extremely mountainous with narrow paths criss-crossing its 122 square kilometres. Jamestown is the business hub and can be compared with a small rural town in South Africa. There is one bank on the island, no ATMs, no estate agent signs, no vehicle dealerships.

Shops are few, since almost everything is imported - clothes, furniture, vehicles and even fresh fruit and vegetables. The geography is varied and includes barren parts with hardly any vegetation as well as rain forests. The 4 000-odd islanders are extremely friendly and seemed quite laid back. The tourism positioning “one of the world’s last remaining ‘undiscovered’ places” is exactly how I would describe St. Helena.

One comment filed:

For those who like the unvarnished tourist experience, now is the time to visit St. Helena Island. It’s going to change. And of course, there’s a rapidly closing window of opportunity to go on the world’s last mail ship.

ST. HELENA: UNEARTHING THE EXCEPTIONAL

News24/Travel 6^th September 2013

Want to get in on one of the world’s best-kept slow travel secrets?

www.rms-st-helena.com

Jamestown, St. Helena (Shutterstock)

Consider a relaxed voyage to St. Helena, one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world, on board one of the last working royal ships the RMS St. Helena.

Yet, this unique opportunity to appreciate the hospitality of a bygone-era comes to an end in 2016.

Saint Helena Airport is under construction and will open concurrently with a new Mantis hotel, when the RMS St. Helena is said to become non-operational. Rich in fauna and flora, the island fits with Mantis’ mission of ‘Unearthing the Exceptional’.

Famous as the place where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled to, Mantis together with the RMS St. Helena are focusing on bringing hospitality, education and conservation expertise to the island.

The island has an abundance of natural beauty, friendly people and fun-filled activities.

If you do go you’ll get to walk on land once occupied by prisoners of war during the Boer Wars as well as meet Jonathan^{but see Our Comment, below}, arguably the oldest tortoise in the world, who enjoys life in the picturesque gardens of Plantation House, the governor’s official residence.

A visit to St. Helena also means exploring the scenic coastal and inland walks. A leisurely escorted tour in the island’s only Charabanc is a highlight, as is the stop at the top of Jacob’s ladder that looks across to Jamestown. The museum in Jamestown is highly recommended. Here the history of Britain’s second oldest colony is laid out in an informative and interesting way.

If you’re interested in experiencing this unique RMS St. Helena voyage there are different tours on offer. All trips depart from Cape Town with the ship also calling at other interesting places along the South Atlantic Ocean route.

Upcoming themes include the Oktoberfest, which is a beer tasting voyage. Namibian breweries will offer 11 products to be in the spotlight for three evenings of the four-night trip.

The chairperson of the Mantis collection Adrian Gardiner said as part of their growing portfolio of boutique cruises worldwide, they’re excited to be marketing this iconic royal mail ship as it one of only two left in the world.

“The last of the RMS fleet will sail its final voyage when the airport on St. Helena Island is unveiled and it is an honour to have this vessel in our collection, get on board while you can,” said Gardiner.

Tourism will undoubtedly receive a welcome boost and visitor numbers are expected to rise but will be restricted to 30,000 a year, once the airport is complete in 2015. Could there be a better time to visit this exclusive and exotic destination, with its unique ecosystem? We think not.

Our Comment

For accuracy and to avoid disappointment, don’t imagine that you will get anywhere near Jonathan, or any of the tortoises. They roam freely in a field below Plantation House but visitors are no longer allowed into the field, at the orders of The Governor, supposedly to protect the tortoises. You may be lucky and Jonathan will decide to come over to the visitors’ walkway and meet you; otherwise you will more probably just see him in the distance. Read more about Jonathan.

ST. HELENA: A FLIGHT TO THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

mail & Guardian, South Africa 2^nd August 2013

St. Helena is about to stand on its own but will its new airport bring the tourists?

A St. Helena resident climbs the 699 steps known as Jacob’s Ladder above the capital, Jamestown. The island has only been accessible by sea, but the building of an airport could bring many changes. (Reuters)

It is not easy to travel to St. Helena. First, there is only one way to get there and that is by sea. Second, as a destination it is formidable. The island is a small volcanic outcrop in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, circumscribed by cliffs which plunge into seas of more than 4,000m deep, and it is lonely: Cape Town is a five-day sail away; Angola to the east and Brazil to the west are each close to 2,000km away; Portland in Dorset is almost forgotten.

As its colonial British owners have long known, St. Helena is best suited as a fortress of incarceration for upstarts most irritating to the empire. They include Napoleon Bonaparte and Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo and about 6,000 Boer prisoners of war. St. Helena is “further from anywhere than anywhere else in the world”, is how the writer Julia Blackburn once described it.

Until 1502, when the Portuguese seafarer João da Nova was said to have discovered it, it was uninhabited. Its population peaked at 9,850 (in 1901, when the Boer prisoners were there), though it has been in steady decline to today’s 3,800, expats not included.

But all that is about to change. The island, Britain’s oldest colony after Bermuda, must begin to fend for itself after centuries of dependence. St. Helena is the most costly of Britain’s 14 overseas territories.

After decades of vacillation the United Kingdom finally made a commitment to develop the island’s tourism industry. To help the islanders do that, the British government is building them an airport - £250-million worth of access to fast transport and the instrument with which to drag this slowly decaying Dickensian society into modernity.

I am on the island as Basil Read’s guest to inspect the South African company’s progress with the airport. Basil Read won the tender from the British government to design, build, operate and transfer the airport against several competitors. They dropped out chiefly, as Basil Read’s island director Deon de Jager says, because “it could not be done”.

The airport is the biggest of its kind that the UK government has ever signed and is one of the largest construction projects awarded to Basil Read.

Forbidding grey

The RMS St. Helena - the world’s last working mail ship - rounds the island from the south-east. The coast is a forbidding grey, as the island of Dr Moreau might have been in the eye of HG Wells, and I wonder whether the island would turn out to be Moreau’s laboratory of accelerated evolution, or would the film version of the book, The Island of Lost Souls, be more apposite?

On board the RMS in the bright temperate sunlight typical of the island’s climate, the mood is light. After days of stoic endurance, the islanders among the passengers appear on deck having remained below for most of the voyage.

“We’re Saints, see? St. helenians.” My informant is fishing boat skipper and dive instructor Craig Jon. In the cargo hold is a new motor launch which Craig and his brother, Neil, plan to use for scuba diving.

The brothers don’t have customers yet, but they bought the boat in South Africa in anticipation of an influx of tourists that would begin with the completion of the airport.

Jon’s deliberate explanation must mean that he has said it before, that he will repeat it as often as necessary. He does so gently, if in a non-standard English accent alien to my South African ear, but there is no doubt about who and what he is. I ask the Jons what they paid for their new boat, but they won’t say.

“Enough in pound, see?”

I decide the heavily accented dialect is a form of Cockney, but with an alien inflection assimilated from the descendants of slaves and indentured labourers. Perhaps it was formed in the island’s heyday, during the regency era when George III’s son, the Prince of Wales, ruled Britain as regent. That time more than a 1,000 ships a year anchored off Jamestown, the capital and victualing station for sailing ships.

But now, as the RMS approaches its anchorage, no more than a dozen yachts float in James Bay.

Redundant

There is no harbour. Passengers disembark on to lighter vessels which deposit them on a quay of sorts with the rising swell crashing into the rocks at the foot of a cliff overhanging Jamestown. Ours is the only ship in the bay and, with the rare exception, that is the way it has been for many decades.

It was steam, that first engine of modernity, which began the decline of the island as a victualing station, since it made sailing redundant and a shortcut between the Cape and Europe possible. The death knell to what little export industry the island had came in the 1950s when Britain replaced flax with nylon as raw material for its postal bags.

There are no other industries of any economic significance. Intermittent rainfall and erosion on a vast scale make agriculture a poor prospect. There is nothing to mine and outside of exotic sport fishing, the depth of ocean makes commercial fishing unlikely without a breakwater and harbour.

With the imminent retirement of the RMS, which, for the moment, delivers every life-sustaining necessity to the island, even that seems a remote possibility.

Also on board the ship was a representative of resort operator Mantis. He declined to be interviewed, but it is clear that the British government’s anticipated 30,000 visitors a year to the island could justify the construction of at least one upmarket hotel.

The site on which Mantis has its eye is a 19th-century fort overlooking Jamestown. Other hotel groups, including Protea, have also expressed interest, according to Stuart Planner, the commercial property director of Enterprise St. Helena, a government agency charged with tourism development.

The hotel groups must know something most of the Saints don’t. If the island is to entertain 30,000 visitors a year the airport must receive 82 passengers a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year. It is difficult to see how the airport, which is designed to handle aircraft with a maximum capacity of 200 passengers (Airbus A320, Boeing 737-800) on its 1,850m concrete runway, will deal with the arrival of such hordes.

Possession of cannabis

The Saints to whom I spoke are mostly cynical about the tourism prospects and many oppose it, even if Basil Read employs about 250 islanders while the airport construction is under way.

A plebiscite conducted before the project started gave a 60% approval, but that number included the large diaspora of Saints in the UK, for whom fast transport home will be desirable and, unlike their compatriots on the island, more likely to be affordable.

The Saints on the island are poor, though, thanks to British welfare, not destitute. Crime is virtually unknown and violence rare. Most offences, according to the weekly police report, are connected to the possession of cannabis.

You may be right to judge the Saints as extraordinarily hospitable and laid-back islanders, but they are also shy and reserved to the point of subservience.

Class distinctions are along racial lines, with British expats working for the government on top of the pile and the darker descendants of slaves and labourers imported over centuries at the lower end, and for whom education and wealth prospects are limited. Most younger Saints either leave the island, or want to leave. That, too, is a circumstance that has prevailed for a long time. When the British established a naval station on the island in the 1840s to suppress the African slave trade across the South Atlantic, about 15,000 slaves were liberated there.

The British offered to repatriate them, but for illiterates captured all over Africa and sold in Madagascar, it was difficult to say where exactly home was. Now the Saints’ choices seem as limited as they were before: Those who can, leave. The others, those who are unlikely ever to afford an air ticket off the island, or passage aboard the RMS, and who are unlikely to gain much from repatriated hospitality profits, must accept the largesse of its colonial owner - or perish. For many, St. Helena is indeed The Island of Lost Souls.

Blom visited St. Helena as a guest of Basil Read earlier this year