MYGREENPOD.COM ON ST HELENA ^∧

By Katie, mygreenpod.com, 14^th August 2015{3}

Martin Wright takes a Royal Mail ship to one of the world’s remotest inhabited islands

One-third of the way across the South Atlantic from Africa to America, in one of the emptiest oceans in the world, lies an extraordinary sliver of Britain. And in the middle of the sliver is a micro slice of France.

Named after the Saint’s day on which it was discovered - five centuries past - by astonished Portuguese sailors, St Helena is one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands. But it doesn’t always feel that way. Walk up Main Street in Jamestown, the ‘capital’, and you’ll find much that’s familiar - if a little out of time.

On the one hand you can imagine yourself in a Devon market town from the 1950s: the pace of life’s easy, with people gossiping on benches outside their whitewashed houses. On the other hand young men sport shades at the wheel of their 4x4s, flush from a spell of work on the military bases on Ascension Island or the Falklands, bass-heavy music hammering out of their stereos.

THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE

First, though, you have to get there. In 2016 St Helena’s first airport will open - and the island will be tugged sharply into the 21^st century. For now, unless you own a yacht, you’ll spend five days and nights sailing out from Cape Town on the ‘Royal Mail Ship St Helena’.

Like the island, it’s one of a kind. Virtually everything that travels to or from the place does so on the ‘RMS’: people (living and dead), fridge freezers, cars, food… It’s the island’s sole lifeline - and the last in a line of ships built specially for the task.

The journey is a combination of the banal and the wild, with Bovril for elevenses, quiz nights and deck cricket - all with the wide, wild immensity of the blue sea all around, unblemished from horizon to horizon. The RMS strikes out far from the nearest shipping lanes, settlements or even flight paths. A hundred, a thousand, a million years ago, the outlook beyond the rail would have been the same. This really is the middle of nowhere.

Next year the RMS will be pensioned off and the first tourists will be jetting in from Johannesburg to a spanking new airport which, the government hopes, will catalyse economic development. It’s a big ask.

NAPOLEON AND THE STARS

St Helena is a dependency in more than one sense of the word. Once a vital staging post on the journey east - before the Suez Canal stole its rite of passage - it’s now largely a subsidy economy. Many of the ‘Saints’, as the islanders refer to themselves, work for the government, or in government-owned businesses. Boosting tourism is key to prospects of a more independent, sustainable economy. And there is much for tourists to see.

Napoleon’s six years here - between Waterloo and his death in 1821 - already act as a tourist draw. The few acres comprising his house and tomb were given to France when Britain sought favour from Paris in the mid-19^th century, and there is even a French consul general in residence to keep watch on this tiniest corner of La République.

The isolation that made St Helena suitable for tucking away an ex-Emperor attracts another sub species of tourist: stargazers. Far from any source of serious light pollution, the island has a quite astonishingly clear night sky. Stand in a valley sheltered even from the scattering of street lamps, and the stars seem so close you could almost pluck them by hand. Small wonder plans are afoot for it to become an official International Dark Sky Park.

AS FOR THE LANDSCAPE…

For a small island, the countryside is impressively varied. Starting from the coasts, bare, wave lapped cliffs rise to arid grassland and, in some cases, strips of rocky desert. The odd waft of sand serves as a reminder of a primeval sea floor, when the ocean was hundreds of metres higher than it is today.

This gives way to pasture - much of it bare, overgrazed and, in places, scarred with the red-earth gashes of gully erosion. There are swathes of quite English-looking countryside: hills and valleys intercut by winding, flower- banked lanes, a mix of pasture, plantation forest - pines, eucalypts - and patches of vegetable gardens.

Clinging to the ridge line of Diana’s Peak and Mount Actaeon is the cloud forest - a tangle of tree ferns, brackeny things and weird- looking, weirdly named spindly shrubs - ‘he cabbage’ and ‘she cabbage’.

Below the cloud forest, ever threatening to overwhelm it, is a vast blanket of flax - the pervasive relic of a Victorian attempt to inject a sense of industry into island life. Like most enterprise on St Helena this was a government- backed initiative; it provided the raw material for mail bags and a (barely) living wage for the islanders. The mills shut down in the ‘60s, but the flax remains, swallowing the ground, the big daddy of all the island’s (many) invasive species. From a distance it looks like a gorgeous sea of green, but beneath its photogenic surface it quietly smothered the native flora.

PLUNDERING PARADISE

Passengers on the RMS are issued with leaflets on ‘biosecurity’ in an effort to keep the endemics clinging on. It’s an uphill struggle. Old prints show that, by the time the landscape was first recorded, it was already stripped bare of most of its original vegetation, the tree ferns and hardwoods that had once cloaked the land. The lethal combination of man and goat had done its work.

Despite discovering the island the Portuguese never settled there themselves; instead they built a chapel, planted fruit trees and left behind goats, pigs and sick sailors who were left to recover in what must, briefly, have been a tropical paradise of clear flowing streams, fruits and forest. The forest was raided for timber and fuel - and the goats, of course, stopped it from coming back. A typical pattern: man cuts, goat hoovers. In the face of such an onslaught, it didn’t take long for the forest to fail.

When the English came in the 17^th century, they carried on the despoliation. One visitor wrote of seeing a thousand goats in a single field: with that strength in numbers the trees never stood a chance. The English tried to conserve the dwindling ‘Great Wood’ by building a wall around it. But the goats persisted, and the forest shrunk to isolated remnants, clinging on in crevices and high peaks.

WIREBIRDS AND BLUSHING SNAILS

Conservationists remain optimistic that much can still be salvaged. With the support of the Department for International Development, the airport developers are restoring wetlands and helping with the creation of a ‘Millennium Forest’ to replace the Great Wood. Careful flax clearance is uncovering native species which, with impressive stubbornness, spring back to life. After years of retreat, the cloud forest is slowly gaining ground once again.

It’s not just conservation for the sake of it, either. Eco-tourism is a key part of the island’s offer, and with good reason. Dolphins, whales, whale sharks and bright blue angelfish circle the shoreline. St Helena has 50% of the UK’s endemic species, though few are of the charismatic megafauna (or flora) variety.

Instead, it’s a case of watch where you tread. Many are tiny: invertebrates skulking somewhere in the grasses, the coyly named blushing snail sliming along the tree ferns and the odd unremarkable flower or two. But there are more striking specimens, including the island’s unofficial emblem, the wirebird. This cute little plover, much predated by cats (feral and pet), is now fiercely protected. Cat traps are laid to catch prowling moggies: the pets are returned to their owners, the ferals put to terminal sleep.

SWAP SHIPS FOR PLANES, 4X4S FOR EVS

Replacing a ship with a plane hardly sounds sustainable, of course - but in terms of carbon it’s a close call. The environmental costs of feeding and fuelling a hundred or more people for a week at sea on a 30-year-old ship are far from negligible.

But for more decisive sustainability gains, the island needs to exploit its own resources. It’s recently opened a small solar farm to take advantage of all that tropical sun. When completed, this could supply 40% of the island’s power needs - replacing the diesel which, of course, has to be shipped in. There’s a longer term prospect of combining more solar with ocean thermal power in order to move close to self- sufficiency.

If islanders could be persuaded to swap their gas-guzzling 4x4s for electric vehicles, that could take it a step further down the sustainability track, as could converting some of the grazed-out pastures to vegetable gardens and horticulture.

None of this will come easy. Much depends on tourist dollars boosting government coffers - and on the ‘Saints’ themselves discovering an enthusiasm for sustainable enterprise. If those go together, St Helena could yet serve as an exemplary case study for small island sustainability the world over.

See also: Endemic Species • Astronomy • Visitor Information

NAPOLEON AND ST HELENA ^∧

By Brian Unwin{10}, Washington Examiner, 8^th August 2015{3}

Two hundred years ago, on Aug. 8^th, 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte embarked at Plymouth on a British warship for the second time in his life. On this occasion it was the ship of the line, the Northumberland. The first time had been only just over three weeks before when, following his comprehensive defeat at the battle of Waterloo, and after agonizing days of indecision, he had surrendered near Rochefort on the French West coast to Captain Maitland of His Majesty’s Ship, Bellerophon, to be conveyed to England. His initial plan, after fleeing from Paris, had been to sail on a French frigate to America. But the Royal Navy had blockaded the port, leaving him little choice but to surrender.

He was not allowed to land at Plymouth while the British Cabinet decided what to do with him. Out of naivety or sheer effrontery he wrote to the Prince Regent, the future King George IV, to “throw myself upon the hospitality of the British people” and seek a comfortable residence somewhere in exile in England. But the government of Lord Liverpool, which had for years fought a life and death struggle with Napoleon, would have none of this and decided to send him to St Helena, a remote volcanic island in the South Atlantic, then in the possession of the British East India Company.

Accordingly, on Aug. 8^th, Napoleon and his entourage were transferred kicking and screaming from the Bellerophon to the Northumberland to begin the long sea voyage to St Helena. They were accompanied by transport ships containing about 2,000 British troops, and an admiral in command of a small flotilla to keep a day and night watch on the island. Napoleon had escaped once from Elba and they were determined that he should not escape again.

St Helena has been a British possession since the mid-17^th century and (until a new airport opens in 2016) remains one of the remotest inhabited places in the world, some 1,200 miles from Angola and2,000 miles from Brazil. The only regular means of reaching it is still by the last Royal Mail Ship, St Helena, which makes the week long journey from Cape Town every three weeks or so. Napoleon landed there on the 15^th of October and was to spend the next five and a half years in captivity, living with his 35 or more loyal companions in Longwood House, a damp and rambling converted farmhouse, whose amenities were light years away from the luxury of the palaces he had occupied in Paris and other great European capitals. Though free to roam the grounds of the house, he could not go beyond them except in the company of a British officer, and every evening at sunset British sentries with bayonets fixed closed in on and surrounded the house.

Napoleon fought tooth and nail against the restrictions imposed on him, which he regarded as a violation of every conceivable international law. He particularly detested the British governor sent out to watch over him, General Sir Hudson Lowe, describing him as “like a hyena in a trap” or a “Sicilian brigand,” and refusing to see him again after only six meetings in the early months. Lowe was not the most imaginative of jailors, but he tried hard to supply Napoleon with all reasonable amenities and comforts - except his freedom. He suffered, however, from strict orders to offer Napoleon what he regarded as the greatest and most provocative of insults, to address him formally as General Bonaparte rather than as His Majesty the Emperor Napoleon.

At first Napoleon believed, or hoped, that the British government and its allies would relent and allow him to return to Europe. But as time progressed, and some of his most senior companions left the island, he began to realise that there was no hope and that he would end his days there. He spent more and more time in his precious warm bath and his physical and psychological condition deteriorated.

Napoleon died a miserable and painful death at Longwood on May 5^th, 1821. Although there are many conspiracy theories, some attributing his death to arsenic poisoning, it was almost certainly due to stomach cancer, from which his father had died at an early age. He was buried in a simple unmarked grave on the island, although the British government allowed the French in 1840 to disinter him and transfer his body to France, where it lies in state at Les Invalides in Paris.

Napoleon was a giant of his age, a great general whose legal and administrative reforms have also shaped much of the governance of France and the rest of Europe to this day. His death was the epitome of classical tragedy, the abrupt descent of a great man from the highest to lowest state. His last recorded words on his death bed were, “France, mon fils, l’armée, Joséphine” (“France, army, head of the army, Joséphine”){11} - four of the things that were most dear to him. What he did not mention was the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers and civilians from France and other countries that his imperial adventures had caused.

See also: Napoleon Bonaparte

FASLANE DIVERS CALLED IN TO CLEAR WRECK IN SOUTH ATLANTIC ^∧

Published on thelochsidepress.com, 23^rd July 2015{3}

Archive image of the RFA Darkdale after she had been torpedoed

Royal Navy divers based at Faslane were called in to clear explosives from a wreck in the South Atlantic.

They were deployed to St Helena to work on the Royal Fleet Auxiliary ship Darkdale, a freighting tanker which refuelled warships during World War 2.

While at anchor in James Bay, she was torpedoed by German submarine U-68 in the early hours of October 22^nd 1941, resulting in the loss of 41 crew members - with only two survivors.

The ship was split in two by the explosion, caught fire and sank within five minutes, remaining at a depth of 42 metres.

Members of the Fleet Diving Squadron above the Darkdale wreck

In 2010, during a winter storm, the wreck released some of the oil that she had been carrying as cargo, leading to calls from the islanders who live in the British Overseas Territory for the Ministry of Defence to step in and prevent an environmental hazard.

The Northern Diving Group was sent from the Clyde, embarking on the RMS Saint Helena, the last operating Royal Mail Ship in the world and the only way to access the remote archipelago, which is 1,200 miles from the nearest land.

Using specialist equipment, divers were able to remain at depth for prolonged periods and went on to remove 38 large projectile items, totalling around 80kg of high explosives.

Lieutenant Olly Shepherd, who led the team, said: “It was an extremely challenging and remote location to work in, but the team performed exceptionally and we have successfully cleared the wreck of a significant explosive hazard. It certainly made a change from removing old ordnance around the freezing waters of the UK.”

The clearance of the wreck allowed MoD salvage teams to start safely removing the trapped oil within the holding tanks of the wreck.

The operation is due to be complete by mid-August, allowing the wreck to remain safely in place as a haven for marine life.

The Royal Navy ship HMS Protector, moored off St Helena

See also: Diving • Lost Ships

SCOTTISH SHERIFF BECOMES APPEALS JUDGE IN WORLD’S MOST REMOTE COURT - WITHOUT LEAVING DUNDEE ^∧

By David Leask, Herald Scotland, 9^th July 2015{3}

The law has always had a long arm.

But never quite as long as 5,000 miles. Until now.

A Scottish sheriff has been appointed to serve as an appeal court justice for the tiny and remote Atlantic islands of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha. And Dundee-based Lorna Drummond QC may be able to serve her duties without actually visiting the volcanic outposts.

The sheriff - who spends most of her days laying down the law to benefit cheats and drunken louts in and around Perthshire, Fife and Angus - has unparalleled expertise in the law of the two islands.

She was, after all, once the only lawyer on Saint Helena, where the courts are run by lay magistrates. Ms Drummond, along with three English judges, will be responsible for reviewing their decisions but is not expected to need to journey to the islands.

The island was once effectively the world’s most isolated jail, the place where Britain exiled its enemies, such as Napoleon Bonaparte and later the rebel Zulus and Boers of South Africa.

Now peaceful Saint Helena, the tiny UK outpost in the South Atlantic, has the world’s smallest prison and barely any recorded crime, despite contradictory allegations of a culture of mass sex abuse of young girls.

The island, 2,500 miles east of Rio de Janeiro, is getting its first airport next year but is currently only reachable by a gruelling sea journey.

Still ruled by Britain, Saint Helena and its two sister territories, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha have just a few thousand citizens.

Ms Drummond said: “To date the court of appeal has dealt with only a very few cases. The papers are generally reviewed in the UK and travel to St Helena will not usually be necessary although it is still a possibility. The few cases there are will no doubt provide a contrast with my cases in Dundee.”

Ms Drummond has been a solicitor and an advocate, parliamentary counsel in London and the crown counsel in Saint Helena, where she advised the island’s government on both civil and criminal court matters.

Saint Helena no longer has the death penalty. A decade ago Scottish advocate Edgar Prais QC was instructed to defend a teenager accused of murder following a bar brawl, and he flew from England to Ascension Island, then took the mail ship for the two-day journey to St Helena - staying at the house where Napoleon spent his last years in exile.

MEET THE BANKING REGULATOR WITH AN 8,000-MILE COMMUTE ^∧

By MAX COLCHESTER, Wall Street Journal, 16^th June 2015{3}

Remote St Helena has a volcano, Napoleon’s empty tomb and a bank regulator who sails in

One day in February, a British bank regulator caught the boat on his regular commute.

Six days later, Chris Duncan arrived at work on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. The critical things were there: Napoleon Bonaparte’s empty tomb; Jonathan the tortoise; the stacks of cash to count in what may be the world’s smallest regulated financial system.

Mr. Duncan is Chairman of the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of St Helena, a rocky tropical isle 1,200 miles off Africa’s coast. Amid burgeoning global financial regulation, even tiny outposts need oversight, Mr. Duncan says.

Could the financial system of St Helena, population about 4,600, ever implode? “Yes,” he says. Among other things, “the bank is on top of a volcano.”

St Helena is a British Empire relic. Queen Elizabeth II has executive authority over it. The U.K. helps appoint the governor{11} who administers its122Km².

The only way to get there is by sea, as Mr. Duncan does every year. There isn’t cellphone reception. It has a currency - the St Helena Pound - but no ATMs. It has one bank and, hence, needs a bank regulator.

Its residents, many of British, Asian or African origin call themselves ‘Saints.’ Some are descendants of settlers who made it a stopover for sailing ships after its discovery, uninhabited, in the 16^th century. Today, big exports are fish and an expensive coffee said to have been enjoyed by Napoleon, who died there in exile and was later reburied in France.

The volcano that created the island is extinct, not much of a threat to its financial system. But St Helena faces upheaval of another sort: It is preparing for a global debut when its first airport opens next year.

“We will be the newest tourist destination in the world,” says Niall O’Keeffe, chief executive for economic development at Enterprise St Helena, which promotes investment into the island.

Touted attractions include picturesque walks, Napoleon’s first tomb and Jonathan, a giant tortoise that lives on a colonial-mansion lawn and may be 183 years old. The rocky coastline doesn’t offer white-sand beaches, but it is pleasantly warm year-round.

Mr. O’Keeffe hopes airplanes will bring visitors to invigorate an economy long reliant on U.K. subsidies. Mr. Duncan worries visitors may include shadier types, perhaps money launderers aiming to exploit the offshore banking system. “I have been preparing for the time,” he says, “when the potential eyes of criminals will come into focus on such a place.”

Thousands of miles north, from his house on England’s south coast, 67-year-old Mr. Duncan can oversee much of what happens at the island’s bank via computer.

But some things he just can’t see without going.

The credit-card system is limited, so cash prevails for many things. The Bank of St Helena’s busiest day is Thursday, says Rosemary Bargo, its general manager. That is when fresh vegetables arrive and a queue snakes outside as customers withdraw cash.

It once hand-delivered pay envelopes to government workers, who then queued to deposit them back. Now there is online banking; the bank expects an ATM soon.

The bank closes at 3 p.m. “But on the upside, there’s rarely any reason to spend money after dark anyway,” says August Graham, a Briton who recently moved to the island.

Mr. Duncan spent his career with British bank Barclays PLC working in West Africa, Japan and South Korea. Four years ago, as Mr. Duncan lined up at a lunch buffet for Barclays retirees, a former colleague suggested the St Helena job.

After consulting a map, he applied. “In retirement,” he says, “I have refused to go to the golf course.”

Mr. Duncan takes his St Helena trip in February, when British weather is inclement.

It is a regulatory odyssey. Flying the roughly 6,000 miles to South Africa, he boards a Royal Mail Ship for St Helena, about 2,000 miles away. It boasts a fine galley, and sometimes passengers play cricket on deck. When it storms, he reads banking rules on his bunk.

Disembarking at the capital, Jamestown, he dons blazer and tie and embarks on a whirlwind tour. After checking in to a bed-and-breakfast, he meets the governor and bank management.

He goes on a radio phone-in show. “I get asked, ‘Is my money safe?’ and I say ‘Yes, it is.’”

Mr. Duncan takes a hands-on regulatory approach. He looks inside the bank’s Victorian-era vault and inspects the bank notes that make up its £500,000 customer cash reserves. He visits the pub for local gossip. “It’s important to really kick the tires.”

Outside a few minor procedural issues, he hasn’t found anything amiss.

More problematic is overseeing other islands under St Helena’s jurisdiction, including Tristan da Cunha, an archipelago of about 300 residents 1,500 miles farther south.

The archipelago includes Inaccessible Island and has no bank branch. “I don’t know what they do there,” Mr. Duncan says, adding he can’t justify the cost of visiting and relies on emailed reports and phone calls. Sometimes, he says, the U.K. Foreign Office calls him to check if the islands are solvent.

He isn’t worried St Helena’s government-owned bank is “too big to fail” but about how its 36 staff handle a visitor influx. He wants it to keep up with a global push to make banks safer, particularly by increasing money-laundering controls like identity checks.

Ms. Bargo, the bank manager, says its ‘Know Your Customer’ protocols are up to scratch: “We know everyone on the Island.”

Off work, Mr. Duncan hikes, fishes and visits Jonathan. He soon ships back out: “A week for me is fine.”

See also: Notes and Coins of St Helena

AFTER A WATERLOO ARTEFACT? STRAND OF NAPOLEON’S HAIR IN DORSET AUCTION ^∧

Lock ‘of Napoleon’s hair’ and accompanying letter

By TraceyR, www.blackmorevale.co.uk, 2^nd June 2015{3}

Always one for the weird and the wonderful, Cottees of Wareham have stumbled upon a single hair from Napoleon Bonaparte the Great Emperor’s head. Whether it was pinched when he was held in confinement on Saint Helena during the last six years of his life is a matter of conjecture but this is indeed an extraordinary find. The vendor’s family had stored the hair in a chest of drawers for many years before it fell in to auctioneer John Condie’s hands. As this year is the 200^thanniversary year of the Battle of Waterloo the hair is sure to fetch some attention, with collectors from near and far hoping to own a piece of Napoleon Bonaparte himself. The hair is held down with red wax and includes a note stating that the content of the small fold of paper is “A single hair of Napoleon Bonaparte’s head, 29^th August 1816” and another stating “Obtained 5^th May 1821” - the date of his death.

This curiosity is estimated at £100-£200 and will be offered for sale on Tuesday 9^th June at Cottees Auctions in Wareham.

Author comment

Personally, before I bid even 200 pence for this item I’d like to see evidence that it came from the great man himself; maybe a DNA test that shows it was Napoleon’s, or at least that it is genetically related to all the other “strands of Napoleon’s hair” that seem to be floating around.

Update

The hair actually sold for £130 to an unidentified individual from the Dorset area.

See also: Napoleon Bonaparte

AL PACINO DREAMS OF PLAYING NAPOLEON ^∧

The Washington Post, 27^th May 2015{3}

Al Pacino’s dream role is to play Napoleon Bonaparte.

The 75-year-old actor has revealed he’s wanted to portray the French military general on the big screen for a number of years and his ambition could be about to come true - as a script for the part has recently been presented to him.

He said: “Napoleon has been a dream of mine for a long time. It’s come close but this time it really could happen. There’s a great script about his last years on Saint Helena.”

Saint Helena was the colonised British island where Napoleon was detained in 1815 after being defeated at the Battle of Waterloo by the British Army, and is where he died in 1821 at the age of 51.

The Hollywood legend - who at 5ft 6in is just an inch taller than Napoleon - is confident he could do the historical role justice as he’s sure it wouldn’t be impossible to imitate a man who lived almost 200 years ago.

In an interview with the Metro newspaper, he said: “People think you have to be the exact person but you can only give a version of someone. When I played (whistle-blowing New York cop) Frank Serpico I wasn’t being the real Serpico, even though he was there. It was my take.”

See also: Napoleon Bonaparte

READY SET SAIL IN ST HELENA ^∧

By Kippy Gilders, The Daily Herald, 25^th April 2015{3}

‘An island stuck in time’

A looming presence on the horizon, its heights hidden in dark clouds, after eleven days at sea, St Helena was in sight. It is said that St Helena is one of the most remote inhabited places in the world. But for some, its strategic position, roughly in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, makes it an ideal stopover during the passage from the Cape en route to the Caribbean.

Arriving at James Bay around midnight, the only signs of life were from the bright lights of a large container ship, and the occasional flash of headlights. Cautiously, we launched our tender so that Max and Al could seek out the mooring buoys, while Dani and I stood guard on Corina. After about an hour of careful movements, we were tied to a large buoy, surrounded by other seemingly abandoned boats tied in the same fashion. The following morning, we awoke to our first sight of James Bay; tall, sheer rock face with the only visible life in a small valley between the jagged rocks.

Saint Helena is an island of volcanic origin jutting out of the South Atlantic Ocean. The relative isolation of this small island has resulted in a rich history. Discovered in 1504{12}, her strategic importance was only realized when the trade route to the East was established around Cape of Good Hope. St Helena became a vital stopover for fresh supplies, and the British East India Company soon claimed her British territory.

Today, St Helena remains one of the most remote places on Earth. Other than by cruising yacht, the only access is possible by ship and is a five-day voyage from Cape Town on the RMS St Helena. This is the only connection to the rest of the world, and brings everything from mail to visitors to fresh produce. This isolation has left the island ‘stuck in time’. This is evident as there are no mobile networks on the island, only pay phones and land lines. If you can’t reach someone on his or her landline, then your next best option is to walk around the small capital of Jamestown and ask the shop owners if they’ve seen the person you’re looking for. With an area of 122Km², and just over 4,000 inhabitants, it’s quite likely you’ll find who you’re looking for!

The capital of Jamestown consists of little more than a single street, running up a narrow, deep-sided valley for a mile. In town, you’ll find a few snack bars, some shops, one hotel, an information office, and a bank. The roads leading inland are winding, extremely steep and so narrow that cars can only pass each other in specific bays where the road widens for this purpose. Cars going up have the right of way and constantly honk to warn oncoming cars of their arrival. The steep valleys mean you don’t need to use any gear higher than third. As the roads climb out of town, the landscape changes dramatically. The bare, dry, and rocky coastal region gives way to green, lush rolling hillsides covered in a cool mist. The interior of the island feels more like the English countryside than a jagged rock in the middle of the ocean.

Despite its complete isolation, we were pleasantly surprised by the efficiency of the island. Our feline crew member, Sambal, had fallen ill on the second day out of Cape Town and his health was declining quickly. By satellite phone we’d been in contact with the local veterinarian on St Helena, Joe Hollins, who guided us through treatment. When we woke up the first morning after our midnight arrival, Joe and the senior immigration officer were alongside, ready to take Sambal for immediate treatment and to expedite our clearing of immigration. British territories don’t normally allow foreign animals ashore without extensive quarantine, but Joe had recently changed this rule to exempt critically-ill animals arriving by boat.

The Saints (the people of St Helena) are the descendants of European settlers, African slaves and Chinese labourers, and they speak an English that can be extremely hard to understand. But their kindness knows no limit. We were also pleasantly surprised by the number of cruising boats that pass through St Helena. Perhaps because it’s one of the only places to stop in the Atlantic, but at least three boats would arrive each day to stay for a week of rest before continuing onward to South America or the Caribbean.

With Al’s love of history and subsequent fascination of St Helena, we rented a car and climbed our way to the interior of the island. Our first mission was to visit Longwood House, the sight of Napoleon Bonaparte’s second exile. He was exiled here in 1815, when he had finally been captured by the British. They’d originally captured and exiled him to the island of Elba (off the shores of Italy) in 1812, but he had escaped. The British, furious, defeated him again and exiled him to St Helena, a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic. An island so remote, it took 10 weeks for Napoleon to arrive by ship!

Napoleon spent the last six years of his life in confinement on St Helena, writing his memoirs until his death in 1821 at the age of 51. Many believed that he’d been slowly poisoned with arsenic by his captors, but this is no longer considered true. As Emperor, he undoubtedly enjoyed lavish lifestyles, and some think that his exile at Longwood was no exception. He was permitted to bring an entourage of officers with him, rode horses throughout the day, and enjoyed a ration of 40 kilos of meat, nine chickens and seventeen bottles of wine per day. However, what we saw at Longwood House was rather dismal. The house, now in a better state than ever, was damp and wretched. He also hadn’t seen his wife and son since his first exile in Elba.

Unfortunately, we didn’t get the chance to visit Jonathan the tortoise, who, at 180 years, is the world’s oldest living animal. He lives at the Plantation House, the Governor’s residence, where he enjoys an active life with three younger female tortoises. It is believed that Jonathan was brought to St Helena from Seychelles in 1882, and is the same species of tortoise that we came across in Seychelles Islands months before. Max met Jonathan some 23 years ago, while sailing from Cape Town to Brazil. While enjoying some food at the infamous Ann’s Place, and rummaging through the old log books, we found the entry of Max’s family in 1991… and the entry of my family just a few pages further!

Running almost vertically up from the floor of the valley of Jamestown is Jacob’s Ladder. This staircase consists of 699 very steep steps and serves as a direct link to Half Tree Hollow, the largest settlement on the island. While we huffed and puffed our way up the narrow stairs, we marvelled at the locals carrying groceries up the ladder without even breaking a sweat. Built in the 1800s, it was originally a horse-powered machine for hauling goods to the top of the hill.

The island environment has been reshaped by centuries of human activity to such an extent that it’s almost impossible to know what it actually looked like. There are no endemic land mammals, but goats, rabbits, pheasant and other animals were brought to the island to supply passing ships. Forests were felled, and flax was introduced to support an industry that flourished in the first half of the 20th century. The only surviving endemic bird species is the Wirebird, which is critically endangered with around 350 individuals left in the wild.

Watching RMS St Helena steam into James Bay, one is acutely aware that there is no other way to and from this island. This is all about to change as the island’s first airport is currently under construction. This ambitious project is costing the English government roughly 400 million pounds and involves filling in a whole valley! It is due to become operational in 2016, and the ship service will be discontinued. This will undoubtedly change life on St Helena, and is the most heated topic of discussion amongst the locals.

With heavy hearts, we bid farewell to Al, who decided that one week on this special island wasn’t enough. He’d made up his mind to stay for a few more weeks and return home on one of the last voyages of RMS St Helena. Once news arrived that Sambal had made a full recovery, we cleared immigration, said our farewells to Al and our new friends, combed the town for whatever meagre fresh produce we could find, and set off on the last leg of our final oceanic crossing. Next stop, Brazil!

See also: Visitor Information • RMS St Helena

SHOPPING A DAILY PUZZLE ON REMOTE ST HELENA ^∧

Bangkok Post, 16^th April 2015{3}

JAMESTOWN - If you think grocery shopping is a chore, spare a moment for those on the tiny island of Saint Helena who never know what will be on the shelves from one day to the next.

“This is like living under Soviet rule,” jokes Francois Haffner, a French tourist determined to eat well on the remote South Atlantic island, famous as the place the French military leader Napoleon was exiled until his death in 1821. “In the first store there is butter, in another there are lemons, and in the third you can find some cream. There are no greens, and eggs aren’t there every day,” said an exasperated Haffner. “The fish comes at 1:00 pm, the bread after 11:00 am -- but no later than 12 noon -- and all the shops close at 5:00 pm.” The shopping schedule requires that hungry tourists and residents dedicate a good chunk of time to planning how to fill their stomachs. “There are no stores where you can find everything, and shopping takes some time,” said Haffner. Still, he is determined never to visit the frozen food section, which was stocked with last year’s Christmas pudding in March.

- Choice is a luxury -

The 4,200 inhabitants of Saint Helena have resigned themselves to the reality that choice is a luxury in a place where supplies come only every three weeks on a ship from Cape Town

In contrast with Haffner, the 4,200 inhabitants of the British island are more relaxed about the grocery situation, having resigned themselves to the reality that choice is a luxury in a place where supplies come only every three weeks on a ship from Cape Town. As a result, shopping in the island’s capital, Jamestown, requires some flexibility and a close knowledge of the ship’s schedule.

“Of course, you do not want to starve, but it is better not to look for something specific,” says David Pryce, a native of England who studies insects on the island. “A successful islander has to balance patience with spontaneity”, he says. “You have to make the rounds of stores every day. And if you see something, you have to buy it.”

However, sometimes excitement over new items causes problems, says Tara Thomas, whose family owns four convenience stores. “When bottled water hits the shop, people bulk buy. They panic buy, and they create another shortage,” she says. “If people had a normal consumer behaviour, we wouldn’t have so many problems.”

- Little local produce -

Most produce on the island comes from Britain or South Africa. Little is made domestically. There are cows, for example, but no fresh milk. “We have farmers, but they do not produce enough,” moans Thomas. What little local produce exists is often bartered between islanders or snapped up by hotels and restaurants before reaching the shelves.

Still, some are hoping to capitalise on the scarcity. Mirroring the fashion overseas for self-sufficiency, entrepreneurs have started small-scale farming. Joshua Martin{13}, 39, has set up a business delivering tomatoes and cucumbers that he produces in polytunnels. While his venture is a success, Martin complains there is little coordination between the producers. “Everyone produces the same,” he says.

Then there is the issue of reliability. “The problem is that we are not regular,” says Aaron Legg, a 30-year-old guide who grows bananas. “Retailers cannot rely on us and they have to import.” It’s not for lack of want, says Legg, who plans to start growing onions. “The island imports 70 tonnes of onions a year from South Africa,” he says incredulously. “If there were onions every day on the shelves people would buy more. There is a huge market.”

Shop owners worry that with such short supply they will not be able to accommodate an influx of tourists when weekly flights start between the island and Johannesburg in February next year. With the monthly ship service set to end after the introduction of the flights, retailers worry their produce options will decrease. Now they’re in a quandary. “It is not profitable for a ship to come more often,” says Nick Thorpe, one of the leading importers on the island. “I have the feeling that if they want the ship to come more often, they will have to subsidise it,” he says.

Whether or not that will happen is another story.

See also: Could you live here?

AWAITING ST HELENA’S NEW AIRPORT ^∧

By Andy Walker, BBC News, 20^th March 2015{3}

The coming of an airport presents new opportunities and challenges to one of Britain’s most remote outposts, ending 350 years of isolation.

But, the BBC’s Our World programme asks, what will the arrival of air access really mean for the 4,000 people living in Saint Helena?

Two-hundred years ago this October, the British warship HMS Northumberland anchored off a tiny island to disembark its most famous prize, Napoleon Bonaparte, who had recently been defeated at the battle of Waterloo.

The former emperor had thought he was to be exiled to America. Instead, the man who had once ruled vast tracts of Europe, found himself on the tiny and remote British-ruled island of St Helena.

There, in the first days of captivity - which would end with his death in 1821 - he snarled at those who had defeated him.

“How can the monarchs of Europe permit the sacred character of sovereignty to be violated in my person? Do they not see that they are, with their own hands, working their own destruction at St Helena?”

Situated in the middle of the South Atlantic, St Helena is 1,200 miles from the coast of West Africa. It is just ten miles (16km) long and six miles (10km) wide.

Discovered by Portuguese mariners in 1502, St Helena - whose inhabitants call themselves ‘Saints’ - was originally a Dutch possession before it passed to British control - initially under the East India Company, before becoming a British colony, now called a British Overseas Territory.

The RMS St Helena is scheduled to make its last voyage to the island in March 2016

The Saints, now numbering around 4,000, are the descendents of sailors, settlers and slaves.

This tightly-knit community is currently linked to the outside world by a Royal Mail ship, the St Helena, which makes a five-day journey from Cape Town in South Africa, every three weeks. It carries passengers, mail and everything the island needs to survive, apart from petrol.

But all that is set to change with the building of St Helena Airport - scheduled to open in February 2016.

In November 2011, the UK government announced it was to invest around £250m in the building of an airport on the island’s east coast.

British Overseas Territories

• 14 territories around the globe
• total population is about 350,000 people
• largely - but not all - self-governing, with their own constitutions, governments and local laws
• before 2002, these were British Dependent Territories

Territories are:

• Akrotiri and Dhekelia (Sovereign Base Areas)
• Anguilla
• Bermuda
• British Antarctic Territory
• British Indian Ocean Territory
• British Virgin Islands
• Cayman Islands
• Falkland Islands
• Gibraltar
• Montserrat
• Pitcairn Islands
• St Helena, Ascension, Tristan da Cunha
• South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• Turks and Caicos Islands

Whitehall said this would boost St Helena’s links to the outside world and increase the island’s self-sufficiency, “with the ultimate aim of eliminating the island’s reliance on aid.”

Each year the island receives, on average, $37m (£25m) from the United Kingdom. There is full employment, but 70% of the population works for the government and wages are low - while the cost of goods is high.

Dale Bowers, one the island’s Anglican priests, believes that history has a harsh lesson for the Saints. “The island lost all of its money from the East India Company and there was real poverty. The more educated, business-minded people all emigrated to South Africa and left behind were just the poor people - the ones who couldn’t go any further.”

And, even today, many young Saints leave in search of a better life overseas.

The island’s capital, Jamestown, nestles in a valley

This growing trend in offshore employment is a major contributor to the breakdown of family life on the island, according to Fr Dale. And although he is reluctant to see the island undergo such a major overhaul, he is unsure it can carry on the way it is.

Ivy Ellick, a retired civil servant whose late husband was in charge of customs and income tax on the island, looks at the airport as not only a way for Saints to leave the island, but also facilitate their return.

“I am very pro-airport and I’m very pleased with what’s going on,” she said.

“This was the only development that I thought would actually quench that thirst to leave the island… and will hopefully bring our Saints back.”

“We have to be more confident and believe in ourselves”
Ivy Ellick, Resident, St Helena

But not all the islanders are so optimistic. Many fear opening up to the outside world will create even more problems.

Before his death, local fisherman Trevor Thomas outlined his concerns about the airport.

“Britain is not going to put an airport here for £400m and then we live the same old way we did 20 or 30 years ago. They will want changes. It’s coming. People feel as though they are not being listened to and it makes you angry… and then when you say something that is contrary to what is being presented to you, you are being negative.”

While the British government says it does not wish to damage the island’s sense of community or the environment, tourism is both a natural consequence of better transport links and a source of economic growth.

The island’s lush vegetation, rare plants and the relatively untouched sea surrounding it, could prove a draw, as could the Georgian architecture of the capital, Jamestown and Napoleon’s former residence Longwood House.

Diana’s Peak: The island, visited by Darwin, is home to rare plants and animals

There is also a project in the works to build an eco-hotel on St Helena, and the aviation company Comair Limited has just been appointed as the preferred bidder to transport visitors from Johannesburg to the island in just four-and-a-half hours.

But extra traffic to and from the island will not benefit the islanders directly, argued Mr Thomas.

“They think that the airport is going to create a lot of opportunity and the young people are going to want to stay but for what? Make the beds, drive the taxis, sweep the floors? We can’t all be chiefs. There are other people out there who also believe there is a potential here - people with big money - and we may not be able to compete,” he added.

The threat to St Helena’s strong sense of community is at the heart of much anxiety about the airport.

Filmmaker Dieter Deswarte, who has visited the island on a number of occasions, says a lot of people see St Helena as a special place because it is protected from the outside world.

He believes it’s important for the Saints to make sure that change happens in a way they are comfortable with.

“It’s really the people there who need to take it in their hands and have the confidence to set things up.”

Also convinced that the Saints’ own mindset has a crucial part to play in securing the future of St Helena is Ivy Ellick.

“We have to be able to be more confident and believe in ourselves,” says Mrs Ellick. “Who would know what is best for St Helena other than the people themselves?”

See also: Fly here