SAILING TO SAINT HELENA - ONE OF THE WORLD’S MOST REMOTE COMMUNITIES

By Diane Selkirk, Yachting World, 19th January 2017{2}

The rocky coast of Saint Helena appears off the bow

Gorgeous tropical seas surround the barren coast of Saint Helena, although the island’s interior is surprisingly lush

Saint Helena map

Saint Helena marked 30,000 miles of cruising on Ceilydh our Woods catamaran

Hidden churches lie dotted around the island of Saint Helena


Jamestown is a British village improbably wedged in a volcanic cleft

Jamestown, St Helena from Jacob’s Ladder

Jonathan the 186-year-old tortoise

Hiking along coastal trails

Diane Selkirk was utterly enchanted by the remote island outpost of Saint Helena

We crossed wakes with Captain Cook 350 miles out from the Namibian coast and 245 years after he set out from Cape Town for the South Atlantic island of Saint Helena. While spending six years sailing in the tropical latitudes, my husband Evan, 14-year-old daughter Maia and I found echoes of the early navigators in ports around the world; from the names of harbours and hills, to monuments and statues.

But to sail the same actual route - matching latitude and longitude while comparing the sea conditions and the daily mileage of the HMS Endeavour with our Woods catamaran Ceilydh - was a first for us.

Cook’s log: Wednesday, April 24th 1771. Gentle breezes, and Clear weather. Wind South-East by South to West-South-West; course North 46 degrees West; distance 98 miles; latitude 26 degrees 19 minutes South, longitude 350 degrees 42 minutes West.

It’s always a delight when a passage that promises easy sailing lives up to expectation. After the challenge of the Indian Ocean, the mellow South Atlantic felt like a reward. But unlike the much heavier Endeavour, our 40ft catamaran averaged over 6 knots in winds that were 10-12 knots from astern. While he was making 100-mile days, we pulled ahead with 150-mile ones. It seemed the distraction of our cross-century race with Cook would be short lived.

Racing Cook across the South Atlantic

When you are surrounded on all sides by water, it’s easy to lose track of the hours. Have we been out three or four days? When we changed time zones did the clock go forward or back? Passages that last more than four days become timeless. Days are divided into meals, watches, naps, sunset, moonrise and dawn. The rest of the world recedes; small things punctuate the days. The colour of the water for instance: close to the coast it was a nutrient-rich murky green. And it was chilly. We slept under fluffy blankets and drank litres of hot tea. Exiting the cold, north flowing Benguela Current, the water warmed; increasing from 12°C to 18°C over the distance of 100 miles and then it turned a brilliant tropical blue. But the sea birds were gone; there were no more albatross, kites or terns. We didn’t look out to see seals floating head down with their flippers warming in the sun. Visits by dolphins also dropped off, making the ocean seem vast, empty and endless.

Friday, April 26th 1771. Fresh Gales, and a large Swell from the Southward. Wind South-South-West, South-East by South; course North 50 degrees West; distance 168 miles; latitude 21 degrees 40 minutes South, longitude 354 degrees 12 minutes West.

Almost on cue, our conditions changed to match Cook’s. The GRIBs showed a low in the Southern Ocean which was sending up a steep mixed swell. The wind soon followed. Now we were neck and neck in this odd competition; the Endeavour’s noon position almost matched our own. Two days before reaching Saint Helena, we both crossed the Prime Meridian. For Cook it meant he had, ‘Circumnavigated the Globe in a West direction.’ For us it marked 30,000 miles of voyaging and a return to the western hemisphere, but we were still a long way from Vancouver, our home in Canada.

About 20 miles out, I sighted the volcanic bulk of Saint Helena. Charles Darwin wrote: Saint Helena rises abruptly like a huge black castle from the ocean. Closer to the coast, we spotted stone fortifications built into the cliff faces, reinforcing the impression that we had fallen through the centuries and were approaching a mid-ocean fortress.

Wednesday, May 1st 1771. At 6 A.M. saw the Island of St Helena bearing West, distant 8 or 9 Leagues. At Noon Anchor’d in the Road, before James Fort, in 24 fathoms water. Found riding here His Majesty’s Ships Portland and Swallow Sloop, and 12 Sail of Indiaman. At our first seeing the Fleet in this Road we took it for granted that it was a War; but in this we were soon agreeably deceived.

Five centuries of seafaring

For over 500 years, the only way to reach the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena has been by the sea. Before the Suez Canal opened, some 1,000 ships a year called. Travelling here, we followed not just in the wake of Captain Cook but those of Dampier, Bligh, Napoleon, Darwin, Edmond Halley and Joshua Slocum.

In the more recent past, the island’s visitors have come by the RMS St Helena, cruise ships and yachts. But now, thanks to the brand new airport (private and charter flights only for now), Saint Helena and all her wonders will be accessible to visitors who don’t have weeks, or months, to dedicate to a sea voyage. For the first time, new arrivals - be they governors or commoners - will be certain to avoid the possibility of an Atlantic baptism, no longer required to reach for the swinging ropes at the Jamestown landing and time their first step ashore.

When we took our mooring, in amongst yachts from seven different countries, I almost expected to catch sight of Cook’s square-rigged barque sailing past the base of the fortified cliffs. Saint Helena, more than any place I’ve ever been, feels unreal - caught in an enduring era of exploration and adventure.

The displacement continued with my first step onto the old East India Company pier. As I reached for the orange ropes, the strong arms of two Saints (as locals are called) pulled me safely ashore after our nine-day passage. Moments later we found ourselves looking through chinks in the doors of the pier’s old stone storehouses and making our way toward the harbour master’s office.

After a quick visit with Customs and the port captain, we were directed to the police and immigration. From there we were free to explore the laneways of Jamestown, a brightly painted English village wedged improbably into one of the tropical island’s volcanic clefts.

Isolation ends

Through the centuries Jamestown has been a popular provisioning stop for sailors. Fruit trees flourished in the valleys and goats roamed the hills - offering fresh supplies to passing ships. But the diminishment in shipping meant the market for fresh food dwindled. While it was once a vital and productive port, Saint Helena gradually became a forgotten outpost of the British Empire.

Eventually, entire generations of farmers and workers left the little island seeking employment and opportunity elsewhere. The pomegranate, mango, coconut, pawpaw and banana trees as well as the goats, cows and chickens that were once found in great numbers - and produced enough to meet the needs of both islanders and passing sailors - were supplemented by supplies brought in by the monthly mail ship.

Entering the shops and grocery stores, we discovered that the self-sufficiency that once marked the island was replaced by a reliance on the outside world. Fresh supplies including eggs, onions, potatoes and meat came from South Africa. Milk, cheese, frozen and canned foods were coming from the EU.

But the airport’s construction - which brought back young, highly-skilled Saints as well as an international collection of expats - is transforming the island. Local produce, which was limited to a couple of crops and has been in chronic short supply, is being grown by a new generation of farmers. Thursday, the day the local produce is brought into the shops, results in a good-natured scrum. The island’s extreme dedication to mannerly conduct is overlooked and pushing past an elderly lady is completely acceptable when there’s a gorgeous leafy lettuce at stake.

Falling in love with quirky Saint Helena

Ships and yachts have typically only remained in the Jamestown harbour for as long as it takes to provision. We expected our visit to be similarly short - but we fell in love with the quirky little island and our one week visit stretched to six.

While the island’s exterior appears ruggedly volcanic the interior is as lush and pastoral as the English countryside. The cows that graze the vibrant green fields are cared for by compassionate farmers who let them reach a venerable old-age before dispatching them to the table as nearly inedible stewing beef. There is a retirement home for donkeys that have been replaced by cars and a 186-year-old tortoise called Jonathan, who, along with the much younger David, Emma, Myrtle and Frederika, lives on the lawn of Plantation House, the Governor’s mansion.

Eighty-year-old tour-guide and self-trained historian Robert Peters took us to see the island’s most popular tourist stops. We visited Napoleon’s residence Longwood House and his tomb, checked out the imposing High Knoll Fort, viewed the exterior of Plantation House and saw the island’s highest point, Diana’s Peak. The peak is one of the island’s most popular hikes and is flanked by two hills topped with Norfolk Pines that were planted there deliberately, it is said, as navigation markers by none other than Captain Cook himself.

With the well-known spots covered it was Aaron Legg - farmer and 4x4 tour-guide - who convinced us Saint Helena was worth getting to know better. He took us to isolated valleys to see picturesque churches and pointed out cannons, which are found around the island in remote defensive locations as well as on the walls and fortifications which are built in every valley. And he showed us the Bell Stone, which was a popular curiosity during Saint Helena’s original tourism boom (back during Cook’s era). This is simply a normal-looking boulder that makes a remarkably melodious sound when struck with a rock. It made me want to whack every rock I could find, just in case others sound like bells, and no-one but a Saint had ever thought to check.

We could hit more rocks instead of continuing the tour, Aaron graciously offered. It takes a while to adjust to the easy-going nature of islanders. There’s an old-world virtuousness that we delighted in. The most publicised crime during our visit was theft of a traffic mirror from a hairpin turn. And we learned it’s the height of rudeness to fail to wave at a passing car - a reflex that took two countries to shake.

I decided to forgo searching for more bell stones in favour of further exploration. One of my favourite spots was Lemon Valley. Accessible by hiking trail or a one-mile dinghy ride from the moorings, it was here that some of the 30,000 freed African slaves were processed and quarantined after being rescued from slavers in the mid 19th Century (they were later moved to Ruperts Valley when their numbers overwhelmed Lemon Valley). Now an inviting spot for picnicking, snorkelling, or hiking up to the old fortifications, the valley gracefully mixes beauty, history and modern use in a way that is quintessentially Saint Helena.

Leaving celebrations

Saint Helena still strikes me as an enchanted place and we knew it would be tough to leave. I was afraid that if we left we’d never find our way back. So we delayed.

I met the new Governor, Lisa Phillips while walking retired donkeys at the Saint Helena donkey home. Our hour-long chat led to an invitation to Plantation House. The house was off-limits during the last Governor’s tenure, but Phillips has opened it back up to tours. We saw the chandelier that once hung in Napoleon’s Longwood Estate, and noted the portrait of Napoleon hanging directly across from a portrait of his jailor, the governor of the time, Sir Hudson Lowe - humorously positioned so they could scowl at each other through eternity.

Saint Helena is a reminder about all that is wonderful about voyaging. Remote and unknown, it’s hard won. It’s most certainly not a place that is full of attractions and ‘things to do’. To enjoy such happy days on the island we had to be our best selves, reaching out and meeting local people and learning the rhythms of the island.

We left on Saint Helena day. Our plan was to enjoy the day, see the parade and leave at dusk. When fireworks lit up a small but very special portion of the sky we were ten miles out. The sail was a gentle one: soft tropical breezes from astern, easy seas and a moon each night.

Again, we sailed with Cook: Sunday, May 5th 1771. Gentle breezes and Clear weather. Weigh’d, and stood out of the Road in company. North 50 degrees 30 minutes West; distance 71 miles; latitude 15 degrees 5 minutes South, longitude 6 degrees 46 minutes West.

Arrivals and departures

There are currently no commercial flights to and from the airport, only private jets and charter flights. Early indications are that even this limited service is benefitting the locals.

The RMS St Helena is slated for decommissioning and, thanks to the new breakwater and pier in nearby Ruperts Valley, freighter operations, cruise ship landings and fish processing will all be moved off the historic Jamestown Wharf, which will be reconfigured as a public space. The Saint Helena Yacht Club is looking forward to an increased presence on the wharf, providing a warmer welcome to cruisers. There’s also a plan for a short-term haul-out facility on either the Jamestown Wharf or Ruperts Pier.

Costs: Well maintained moorings are £2 or £3 (GBP) per night. Ferry service runs £2 per round trip. Port fees are £40 and visas are £17 per person.

See also: Yachting ⋅  Visitor Information

 

THE BONES OF ST HELENA

By Diane Selkirk, PS Magazine, 10th January 2017{2}

Two cinematographers are capturing the secret history of a South Atlantic island full of the bones of ‘Liberated Africans’.

Mount Pleasant and the cloud forest

The bones aren’t in pizza boxes, despite what the rumours said - though it was this very rumour that drew filmmakers Joseph Curran and Dominic de Vere of the British film company PT Film to a macabre mystery on the island of St Helena. The bones are actually in archival boxes, in an old storeroom attached to the prison, Curran says. But the rest of the story - forgotten corpses excavated from mass graves to make way for an airport, after which the bones languished - is all true.

Best known as the island where Napoleon was exiled and died, St Helena was in the news last year because of the awkward opening of its first-ever airport. (News reports said it was too windy for a lot of planes to land.) What most people still don’t know is that this island, located in the middle of the Atlantic between southern Africa and Brazil, is a physical link to the Middle Passage, the notorious route Slavers used to reach the New World with their human cargo.

Between 1840 and 1874, an estimated 30,000 ‘Liberated Africans’ were released into refugee camps on St Helena. When they died, an estimated 8,000 were buried in three vast graveyards in the shallow volcanic earth in Ruperts Valley and at the quarantine station in Lemon Valley.

Curran, de Vere, and soundman Oliver Sanders say that, while locals knew about the bones, few knew who they belonged to. These bodies didn’t represent ‘Saints,’ as locals are called - they weren’t seen as part of the island. One resident named Colin Benjamin told the film crew about using a skull and leg bone to play baseball: I’m sorry about that, but being kids that’s the way we grew up.

Bones sometimes just appear here, Curran says. We’re walking through an industrial area in Ruperts Valley, on the northwest of the island. Continuing up the valley, we reach a freshly paved road and the second designated graveyard, which was put into official use after the first burial ground was filled. It’s a scramble down from the road, through dry prickly bush, into the unmarked burial ground. I catch sight of a bone-white fragment and cautiously brush away the earth. It’s a piece of old china. The entire area, which stretches up a dry gully to where it meets graveyard number three, is scattered with rocks and debris.

Curran explains the road was built to bring fuel and supplies to the airport. It was during a geotechnical survey that workers discovered signs of the burials, and, in 2008, archaeologists led by Andrew Pearson, an independent archaeological consultant, excavated the bones of some 325 ‘Liberated Africans’.

 
Left: Dominic de Vere in Butcher’s Grave, Right: Butcher’s Grave detail

The archaeologists unearthed a combination of individual, multiple, and mass graves. Most contained children between eight and 12 years old; some were wearing ribbons or beads; in one case, a tiny copper bracelet.

Annina van Neel, chief environmental commitment officer of the airport construction company Basil Read, oversaw later finds. She told us about finding remains, and the sleepless nights it would cause her, Curran says. I cried for the first time when I watched van Neel cry. The humanity of it all just hit me.

Curran says that filming the documentary was like assembling a puzzle; every person they interviewed had a different relationship to the bones and was just a small piece of the story. As their interviews continued and the story took shape, de Vere and Curran began to realize how timely it was: There were times when the numbers of African refugees almost numbered residents, he says. The islanders would send word to England to say they needed help - that they were struggling to manage and care for the new arrivals - and then another ship would show up, and they had to cope. With an ongoing refugee crisis in Europe and beyond, the bones of St Helena today tell an urgent story.

Slavery and St Helena have been linked almost since the island was discovered, uninhabited, by Portuguese sailors 500 years ago. Five of the island’s earliest inhabitants were escaped enslaved people. By 1723 over half of the island’s 1,100 residents were enslaved. Slavery began its decline in St Helena in 1792, when local laws made it illegal to import new enslaved people. In 1832, slavery was abolished when the East India Company purchased the 614 remaining slaves from their owners for a sum of around £28,067 - and, soon after, the role of many Saints shifted from owner to ally.

One way that the denizens of St Helena helped fight slavery was by sea: De Vere explains that ships like the British HMS Waterwitch formed a blockade off the African coast. When they caught a Slaver, crews boarded it and brought it to St Helena, where the human cargo was released and the ship was broken up. During her years of service, Waterwitch captured around 40 Slavers, liberating thousands of captured Africans.

In April 1843 Waterwitch captured the Brazilian-flagged ship Conceição de Maria. Some 390 people had been loaded aboard the small boat in Benguela, Angola. After 22 days at sea, 349 captives, 60 percent of whom were children, were liberated in St Helena; 41 had died during the voyage. Many were buried in St Helena’s mass graves.

Beyond the sheer tragedy of the finds on this island, archaeologists say the importance of these lives can’t be underestimated. This is the only known assembly of large numbers of first-generation enslaved Africans in the world. They are thought to be the last trace of the estimated 1.8 million people who perished on the Middle Passage, according to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database.

Research opportunities have been limited by local politics, but bone fragments from the graves were part of DNA sequencing and radiogenic isotope analysis in the eurotast project. The project’s goal is to identify the origins of the people who were stolen during the slave trade. Simply put, knowing who is buried in St Helena may answer elusive questions about the people who arrived in the Americas.

St Helena is a magical place. Granite spires rise out of rolling green farmland on one part of the island, while, in other places, multi-hued volcanic cliffs drop abruptly into the sea. These days, the population of 4,000 relies on supplies brought by ship. But in 1850, the island’s farms, fishery, and water supply had to provide for a population nearing 7,000, the hundreds of ships that called each year, and the influx of African refugees.

One sunny afternoon, the island appears more pastoral than imposing. Curran suggests we sail the inviting waters toward the Liberated Africans Depot, the camp set up to house refugees, in Ruperts Valley. From aboard a 40-foot catamaran, he wants to film the sea route the captured Slavers would have taken before visiting the graveyards by land. Sitting on deck, listening to gentle waves, we’re entertained by swooping black noddies, and soon catch a glimpse of a huge whale shark as we approach the rugged red cliffs.

 
Left: A section of the road that connects Ruperts Bay to the airport, Right: Ruperts Bay

  
Left: Butcher’s Grave on the grounds of Plantation House; Middle: The airport check the runway as part of their daily routine; Right: The island’s interior

Even beauty can’t obscure the truth: Experts argue about the true human cost of slavery, but estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database say some 12.5 million people were loaded aboard ships by European slave traders for the journey to the New World, and between 10 and 20 percent died during transport. Records tell us that people were packed into the dank hulls of ships, separated by sex, and kept naked and chained. When the Slavers arrived in St Helena, the captives were often near death thanks to dehydration, dysentery, smallpox, scurvy, and violence.

In the Jamestown library, I come across one account of a ship’s arrival. The paragraph, written by the surveyor and engineer John Melliss in 1861, describes how horrified Melliss was at the brutalities endured by the Africans: The whole deck … was thickly strewn with the dead, dying and starved bodies of what seemed to me a species of ape which I had never seen before. One’s sensations of horror were certainly lessened by the impossibility of realizing that the miserable, helpless objects being picked up from the deck and handed over the ship’s side, one by one, living, dying and dead alike, were really human beings.

Despite grave odds, for the three decades the Liberated Africans Depot was open, locals nursed thousands of the newly freed back to health. Over the years they offered English lessons, schooling, and church services to survivors. Hundreds of refugees opted to stay on the island. The remainder, speaking multiple languages and originating from far-flung parts of Africa, often couldn’t communicate where they were from, making it impossible to return them. Instead they were sent as indentured servants to places including British Guiana, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Walking through the dusty heat of graveyard number two, I can’t help but compare this dreary place with Sane Valley, the lush grove in the island’s interior where Napoleon was interred. Napoleon, whose body was returned to France in 1840, gets an annual remembrance ceremony. The nameless 8,000 Liberated Africans buried on St Helena don’t have a single memorial plaque or grave marker between them.

Curran explains that a memorial for the Liberated Africans will come - but because the bones are claimed by no one, islanders have argued over how best to commemorate them, and even who should be given a role in the decision. People have offered various ideas: immediate interment; plantings to beautify the area; an art installation; a tomb; or even sending the bones back to Africa. Until a decision is made, the excavated bones sit off-limits in a dilapidated storeroom, and the rugged graveyards remain unmarked, untended, and largely unknown.

I think it might not matter how the bones are memorialized, but simply that they are.

I recall that passage I read - Saints picking up the dying Africans one by one as they carried them to freedom - and about how the island’s small population did all it could to care for and bury the refugees, who just kept coming. I think about how deeply the archaeologists were moved during the excavations; and how the descendants of enslaved Africans may find answers to questions about their history within the DNA. I reflect on how the film crew is so committed to telling this story they simply can’t let it go.

And I wonder if maybe this story can serve to remind us of the value of human kindness and compassion in this new era of mass displacement, with so many souls in peril on the sea.

THE MOST EXTRAORDINARY PLACE ON EARTH?

 

John Apps published on, Practical Boat Owner, 28th December 2016{2}

PBO reader John Apps sails to St Helena, an island so full of superlatives he has to pinch himself to ensure he didn’t dream his visit

St Helena, in the middle of the tropical South Atlantic Ocean (16°S 5°W{7}), styles itself as the most extraordinary place on Earth. And for the visiting yachtsperson, it is indeed anything but ordinary.

Technically, it is not the most remote place in the world in distance, being beaten by Easter Island which is 400 miles more distant than its nearest inhabited neighbour (1,100 miles to Pitcairn Island). There are 700 miles between St Helena and its nearest neighbour, Ascension Island, but unlike Easter Island St Helena has no airport.

The RMS St Helena, serving the British territories in the South Atlantic, takes two days to get from St Helena to Ascension with its airport links to the UK and the United States.

If you want to phone someone from your boat as you arrive, or send a text, you’ll find there is no mobile phone signal. So unless you have a satellite phone you’ll need to go ashore to contact loved ones on your arrival at the coin-in-the-slot payphone near the landing dock.

This remoteness and lack of mobile communications or ATMs seems to have created the friendliest people on Earth. It is quite extraordinary the number of times you’re greeted as you walk the streets of Jamestown.

I spent a week on St Helena, and felt that I had a whole community of new friends by the time I left. In some ways it is unfortunate that St Helena is so identified with being Napoleon’s island prison, which takes away from its importance as a great crossroads in the ocean.

Before the opening of the Suez Canal it was a stopping place for almost every ship rounding the Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn. The list of visitors is really a who’s who of famous sailors and explorers: my personal favourites are James Cook, Joshua Slocum and Thomas Cochrane.

St Helena is very easy to get to when going north in the South Atlantic with either the South East Trades as a following wind or on a broad reach, depending which of the capes you have rounded.

James Bay is the main anchorage and is found on the north-west side of the island directly adjacent to the main town, Jamestown.

Unless you have entered the anchorage previously, a night approach may be difficult. There is one major shipwreck close inshore which is exposed at low tide, and a large number of unlit boats in the main anchorage.

I was fortunate to arrive about two hours before sunset so I found pilotage quite simple. The port authority has provided a large number of oversize moorings which are free for the first night then £2 per night thereafter.

A ferry service is operated between 06:30 and 18:30 each day and costs just £1 each way, which you pay at the end of your stay.

The ferry operator, like everyone on St Helena, is very accommodating. I was invited for drinks at Donny’s Bar after work one day and the ferry operator offered a late pick-up for me to take me back to my boat so that I didn’t have to rush.

Of course you can use your own dinghy to get ashore, but quite a swell runs into the bay: it is much easier to leap from a stable ferry platform than to do so from an inflatable while trying to hang onto a painter.

A PLACE OF SUPERLATIVES

St Helena is said to be Britain’s second-oldest colony, and St. James’ Church lays claim to being the oldest Anglican church in the southern hemisphere. Similarly, the prison is reputedly the oldest working prison south of the equator.

Jonathan, a land tortoise, is thought to be the world’s oldest living land animal (aged 183!), while the wire bird, a species of plover, is claimed to be the rarest of the world’s endangered species.

WONDERFUL WEATHER

Best of all is the climate. I was there in December, which is summer in the southern tropics, and found the temperature almost perfect. Being the South Atlantic, tropical revolving storms such as hurricanes, cyclones or typhoons are almost unknown.

The only time I found the heat a little warm was mid-afternoon on board my boat, when I would go ashore and use the free tepid shower at the landing place and spend an hour or so in the cool of the castle gardens.

I did climb Jacob’s Ladder early one morning which raised a sweat, as it’s 699 steps up to Ladder Hill Fort.

St Helena is one of those places that makes me have to pinch myself to believe that I have actually been there in my own boat. While I would classify it in my ‘once in a lifetime experiences’, I have a great desire to go back.

Wonderful people, great weather, safe anchorage - what more do you want when you are moored?

Our Comment: Although published in December 2016, this article seems to relate to a visit that took place in December 2015, so a few things have changed: There now is a Mobile Phone service; the Wirebird is no longer ‘Endangered’, though it is still ‘Vulnerable’; and St. James’ Church now has a spire! Apart from that it’s all still correct.

See also: Yachting • Visitor Information

ANTWERP AVIATION COMPANY ORGANISES FIRST COMMERCIAL FLIGHT TO SAINT HELENA

 

By André Orban, www.luchtzak.be, 19th July 2016{2}

The Aviation Factory brings the first three tourists by plane to the ‘island of Napoleon’

Bombardier Challenger 300

Our first airborne tourists{5}

Saint Helena is a small island located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about four hours away from the African continent. Until recently, the island where Napoleon died was only accessible by sea, because there was no airport. The British government decided in 2011 to build an airport on the island. However, few aircraft have the range and the ability to fly to Saint Helena and to land and take off. On July 13th, 2016 the first flight took place bringing three tourists to Saint Helena. This première was awarded to the Antwerp aviation company The Aviation Factory.

Saint Helena is best known as the place where Napoleon spent the last years of his life (after his defeat at Waterloo in 1815). He died there in exile on 5th May 1821. His residence, Longwood House, is now on display as a museum. The commissioning of Saint Helena Airport will boost the tourism and the economy on the island.

The construction of Saint Helena Airport began in 2013 with 2,000 tonnes of sand imported from Namibia. On May 20th, 2016 the first plane landed, but it was not until July 13th before the first passenger flight arrived there. A Bombardier Challenger 300 from ExecuJet brought the first three tourists to the small island. The aircraft with registration ZS-ACT took off at 8:30am in Lome, capital of Togo, and landed four hours later at Saint Helena Airport. The aircraft then departed the next day to Ouagadougou, capital of Burkina Faso. Benoit Duvivier, one of the driving forces behind The Aviation Factory, was responsible for organizing the first ever commercial flight.

Saint Helena was discovered in 1502 by Portuguese explorer João da Nova. From 1645 to 1659 the island was claimed by the Dutch Republic. In 1658 the British East India Company founded Jamestown and shortly thereafter took possession of the whole island. In 1673 the Dutch recaptured Saint Helena, but two months later they were again expelled by the British. The island then always remained in English hands. By the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, Saint Helena, however, lost its strategic value.

See also: Fly here • Fly Yourself Here

RMS ST HELENA MAKES FINAL CALL TO THE UK

 

By Rebecca Moore, Passenger Ship Technology, 9th June 2016{2}

RMS St Helena passes through Tower Bridge on its last UK call

The RMS St Helena has made its final call to the UK, amid news that entities in countries as diverse as Norway, Australia and Guernsey have expressed interest in taking on the vessel once it is decommissioned from its current service.

PST was lucky enough to be invited on board to mark its last UK call and to celebrate the vessel’s 26 years of service to St Helena Island in the South Atlantic Ocean.

The last working Royal Mail ship is retiring from service due to an airport opening on St Helena Island later this year.

PST understands that both Alderney’s Chamber of Commerce and shipping lines in countries including Norway, Sweden and Australia have expressed interest in buying the vessel.

St Helena Line Ltd chairman Matthew Young said to the gathering on board: It is truly the last working RM ship that actually transports mail and has served the island well for the last 26 years, it has been remarkable in maintaining its schedule over the last 26 years and has performed the service remarkably well… it is very much a living entity as far as the island is concerned and is described as a lifeline, which it really is as without it, the island would have a significant problem.

Looking ahead, he said: We don’t know what the future holds for it yet but clearly that will be determined in the not too distant future. But I am sure there will be life after the service to the island and it will continue for many years to come to serve some other province.

The 6,767gt ship has capacity for 156 passengers and 56 crew as well as cargo.

The last ship to be built in Aberdeen, it last underwent a major refit seven years ago, when passenger capacity was upgraded from 128 to 156 by adding extra cabins; it also underwent a technical overhaul as it was refitted with new, more fuel economical engines, the ship’s captain Andrew Greentree who started his career on RMS St Helena as a cadet told PST. The refit took place in Cape Town. The ship operates on low sulphur fuel.

Our Comment: There were many articles about the RMS’s visit to the UK; we chose one from a more unusual source.

See also: RMS St Helena • Fly here

WHERE THE SAINTS GO DIVING AFTER WORK

 

By Diane Selkirk, Dive Magazine, 16th May 2016{2}

St Helena parrotfish, Long Ledge

It was the size of the ship that astonished me. From the rudder, the big boilers looked miles away. Beyond those, there were bundles of corrugated iron, an engine, anchor windless and somewhere in the distance, the bow. Swimming through a cloud of Butterflyfish, I searched for the locker which an old wreck write-up said contained champagne bottles - I never found the champagne but I did come face to face with a crayfish.

Built by Denny W & Bros, Dumbarton for the New Zealand Shipping Company in 1899 the 131m SS Papanui, with 376 passengers and 108 crew, had just steamed past Saint Helena when a persistent fire in a coal bunker forced them back. She made for the harbour at Jamestown and unloaded her passengers and crew on 11th September 1911; a short while later a boiler exploded and fire spread from the bow to stern. The next day she sank in 13m.

There are many things that make diving the SS Papanui an incredible experience; it’s found in clear, warm water a short distance from shore, the ship’s history is well documented and some of the artefacts that aren’t still on the ship can be found around Jamestown. But the most remarkable aspect of the dive is that - for Saint Helena - it’s not unusual. The SS Papanui is just one of eight protected wreck sites accessible to island divers and her excellent condition is a great example of the island’s strict conservation ethos.

Diver on the SS Papanui; St Helena shrimp, Wharf Steps and the wreck of the MV Bedgellett

A Seafaring History

For more than 500 years the only way to reach the remote South Atlantic island of Saint Helena has been by the sea. The uninhabited island was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, and was long used as a provisioning stop for ships travelling from the East Indies to Europe. In 1659 The East India Company took possession of the island and began to fortify it. In the years that followed Captains Cook and Bligh, the astronomer Edmond Halley, Charles Darwin and, of course, Napoleon all found their way to Saint Helena.

Before the Suez Canal opened, more than 1,000 ships a year called at Saint Helena. Gradually though the island became an isolated and forgotten outpost. Over the past 50 years, only the most intrepid travellers have voyaged to her shores. And only a few, such as Jacques Cousteau, whose crew dived the Darkdale - a tanker torpedoed by a German submarine in 1941 - and Robert Stenuit, the marine archaeologist who discovered a 16th Century ship called the Witte Leeuw, whose treasure of Ming porcelain is now housed in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, came for the diving.

Jamestown, St Helena

St Helena has been one of the most isolated British territories and its 4,200 population’s only connection to the outside world has been a five-day trip by ship to Cape Town in South Africa. However, a £250 million airport has been built and weekly flights are promised. The opening of the airport has been delayed twice and the opening ceremony has been postponed after a test flight revealed dangerous wind changes close to the ground. Until that is resolved the only way to access the 122Km² of rock in the South Atlantic remains the regular mail ship.

Once there you will find hiking trails that cut through multi-hued volcanic hills; historic stone fortifications perched high over churning seas; Napoleon’s estate and tomb; huge Whale Sharks in gin-clear water; and, of course, that spectacular diving.

Speery Island

Conserving for the Future

Graham Sim, 79, is considered the father of both diving and conservation on Saint Helena. He says the first time he went underwater, wearing a hard-to-come-by mask and snorkel, he was amazed by the profusion of fish life. He and a few friends soon fashioned Hawaiian slings out of broom handles and bicycle inner tubes and began spearing so many fish, Sim says he briefly wondered if fish were blind, they were so effortless to catch.

Other divers soon followed his lead. No one had ever interfered with the fish before, Sim told me as we looked out at the blue water over James Bay. But then I noticed the easy-to-reach areas near the wharf were being destroyed. The fish were gone.

Sim’s realisation was life changing-and it transformed the future of Saint Helena. He formed the Skin Diving Club and then the St Helena Dive Club, which has just celebrated its 50th anniversary, gave up spear fishing and starting teaching young Saints (as the locals are called) to dive. He also trained as a fisheries officer and began putting the island’s first conservation measures in place.

Hawkfish, near Cat Island

The endemic silver eel, Mundens Reef

We protected the areas around the wrecks and in James Bay, Ruperts Bay and Lemon Valley, he said. At first, people were angry with me. But the thing we enjoyed, we were destroying.

Warm Clear Water

It’s easy to love diving in St Helena. Visibility runs to 30m and the water temperatures range from 19-26°C. Within a fifteen-minute boat ride from the Jamestown landing there’s a choice of wrecks, reefs, arches, islands and caves. In fact, diving is so easy here that it’s a favourite post-work activity for locals; they head out for a dive and catch the sunset on the return voyage.

Anthony Thomas from Sub-Tropic Adventures, one of the island’s two dive companies, had five of us in his boat for one of his regular afternoon dives. As the newest visitors to the island, he asked us what we’d like to see. We settled on a dive that included a wreck, followed by an arch and cave system - a dive that contained such an assembly of life, diversity and clarity; that had we been anywhere else in the world, the dive would have had both a half dozen dive boats jostling for position and a name.

St Helena Butterflyfish near Cat Island

Five of us, including a dive master, descended to the MV Bedgellett - a salvage vessel that had been used on the SS Papanui, damaged in a storm and then sunk in 2001. Resting on her keel in 17m she boasted a profusion of fish life as well as colourful algae and sponges. Enchanted with the scene, I started a slow swim around the keel of the boat, trying to take in everything at once. We ascended to the deck level where I followed an endemic, and decidedly faded-looking, St Helena parrotfish Sparisoma Stringatum (known locally as a rockfish) toward an overhang where I became intrigued by a spooky looking bearded fireworm.

Saint Helena has several endemic species which include 16 fish species and about 40 invertebrates including Thomas’ favourite, the Nudibranch. For me, the St Helena Butterflyfish Chaetodon Sanctaehelenae was one of the most mesmerising. Congregating in vast shallow-water schools we swam through our first cloud of them on the SS Papanui and encountered our second flashy school while swimming from the wreck of the MV Bedgellett to the arch at Long Ledge.

Moray, Mundens Point

The swim to Long Ledge was through a maze-like landscape of huge boulders and overhangs. Lighting the crevices and caves with a torch, we caught sight of a huge moray eel and a big triggerfish. Every so often we’d glance out to the blue - keeping an eye out for the devil rays that are known to swim in the area.

Most of the dive sites are located on the leeward side of the island - where they can experience a bit of surge from the ocean swells but don’t have much in the way of current to contend with. Thomas will take more adventurous divers to the windward side of the island, where the life can be bigger and even more varied when conditions are right. But almost every dive has something to offer both beginners and advanced divers and typically Thomas will split the groups and send each out with their own dive master.

Silver eel, Cavalley Rock

Much More Than Just fish

As well as reef fish, divers report encounters with a varied assortment of charismatic sea life including, turtles, dolphins, Chilean devil rays and whales sharks. Peak season for Whale Sharks runs from December-March when as many as 50 of the enormous creatures are found in large groupings around the island. While intentionally scuba diving with them is prohibited (snorkelling with a guide is legal), Thomas explained divers will often be at a site when the Whale Sharks show up and then they’re welcome to enjoy the show.

We surfaced after swimming through a long arch and exploring a few big caves. Settling into the boat we watched as the sky turned golden, then red. Two of the divers were giddy with the thrill of a devil ray encounter. One of them, Sam, told me this was her 170th dive on the island, and of all the places she’s been, this is the place that never gets old. I find something new to see every time.

St Helena Sharpnose Pufferfish, Billy Mays Revenge Dive

Graham Sim told me the same thing. For 50 years he’s dived at least once a week. When he started it was with the most basic gear; no wetsuit, no gauges, no buoyancy control, no boat. The island was the most abundant place he’d seen and he was determined to keep her that way. St Helena was lucky, in so many places in the world people don’t even know what a healthy ocean looks like anymore, he explained: We got to learn from other’s mistakes before the damage was done. It’s still amazing here.

Whale Shark

Squirrelfish

NEED TO KNOW

Currently, there are only two dive companies and two dive boats on the island - which means there’s never more than one boat at a site and even the most popular sites are only visited a couple of times a week. As tourism increases, and more boats are added, conservation guidelines will reflect the same high standards.

Into The Blue Email: Craig Yon Craigiyon@helanta.co.sh

Sub-Tropic Adventures Email: Anthony Thomas Sub-Tropic.Scuba@helanta.co.sh

St Helena flounder, Wharf Steps, James Bay

Slipper Lobster, SS Papanui wreck

See also: Diving • Lost Ships