About This Site Helping you use Saint Helena Island Info The best place for information on St Helena{a}

Why is this site here? How do you get the best from it? Read on…

What is this site for?

Put simply, Saint Helena Island Info aims to be a resource which documents St Helena, the island in the South Atlantic. We aim for it to cover everything you could possibly need to know about St Helena: past, present and future. That’s quite a challenge, and although there are already information pages on the site we feel we still have more to do.

This website is a highly valuable resource.{b}

Please note that it is our intention to address our subject in a light-hearted manner, while maintaining factual accuracy and honesty. We aim to be a source you can trust for information about St Helena.

How To Use This Site

You can get to here from anywhere using the HELP button (？). If you came here that way you can return using your browser’s Back button.

Below: Where to start Page Structure à la Carte Subject Groups Explained Other Indexes Content Policies Adverts If you have a question Island History Material we have used

Where to start

If St Helena is new to you, perhaps because you stumbled on this site while looking for something else, start with our Where is St Helena? page, so that at least you know where we are, and then perhaps go to the Information Index page to begin exploring.

If you’re new to Saint Helena Island Info, the best place to start is our Information Index page, which will show you how to navigate to the detail you seek.

This site does not collect any personal data from users, and does not allow users to make any financial transactions, so an SSL Certificate (https://) is not required. See also Technical Information (below)

Page Structure

Pages on Saint Helena Island Info follow a standard structure:

• There is no fixed menu{1}. An icon (☰) floats at the top-right corner of the screen. Click this to display the menu, and again to remove it. This pop-up menu provides quick access to the main pages on the site. It is the same from every page. (Other icons here are explained below.)

• Each page begins with the Saint Helena Island Info crest (), a title and a subtitle. It may also have a ‘context badge’ in the top-right, indicating that the page is about, for example, one of our Seven Wonders, our Top Twenty things to do, etc. If there is no context badge, a selected image about St Helena appears.

• Next there is usually an amusing or thought-provoking quote related to the subject of the page, followed by a banner which provides an introduction to the page’s contents.

• Below the banner on the left there will be location information (where applicable) and to the right are some social media icons.

  We actively encourage users to share our content on social media, and get a discussion going about what we have written. And if your discussion leads you to believe we should change our content, please contact us.

• Then you will find a top-level menu (‘PAGE SECTIONS: ’) - omitted if there are fewer than two sections - and an image related to the page contents. There may also be links to our ‘other related pages’.

• The page content follows.

  • 
    Thumbnail - Click to enlarge
    

    Major headings are numbered, to make it easier to track where you are.

  • Images are frequently shown as thumbnails: click on the image to open it full-size in a new tab or window in your browser, as directed by your settings (example, right). Others are shown variable-width - they expand to fill your display screen (up to 1.5x the original image size). Some variable-width images will also expand if clicked. Where an image does not have a visible caption you can hover over it and a caption may appear (depending on your browser).

  • Links to other pages, selected images or to selected external content are highlighted with an underscore thus{2}. Other linked items include email addresses (click to send email to the address), local telephone numbers (click to telephone the number) and Skype™ tags (click to initiate a Skype™ link) - NB all of these presume your browser is set up to perform this function.

  • If you see the symbol and hover over it you should see the What3Words location of the item in question. Similarly, if you see the symbol and hover over it you should see the coordinates of the item in question, using latest GPS Data.

  • Where there is an audio file to play a trigger box appears, usually with a title (example, right). Click where it says to open and play the audio file in a new browser tab or window (depending on your browser) or hover over the loudspeaker icon to achieve the same without opening a new tab/window. The latter seems to work on most modern browsers. The former works on everything, so you always have a fallback.

  • Towards the bottom of the page you will usually find one or more reproductions{3} of articles on topics related to the page content.

  • Below this you may find a list of Linked Events from our Events Database that reference this page (the section appears only if there are events to display).

  • This is often followed by a humorous image related to the page’s contents, indicated by .

  • Then there are any footnotes and item credits. These are indicated in the text with markers: {1} for footnotes and {a} for credits (on images a credit marker may be superimposed on the edge of the image). Most browsers will show the text of the footnote/credit if you hover over the marker, or you can click on the marker to be taken to the footnote/credit text itself, which will be highlighted to help you identify it. If a marker is highlighted, click on it to return to where you were before. Note that a Credit may be to the person or organisation that supplied the image to Saint Helena Island Info, which is not necessarily the originator of the image. More about credits on our Credits page.

• The page content is followed by the Navigation section, helping you identify further pages of interest.

  • There may be one or more indexes, depending on the indexes in which the page appears - the drop-down boxes link to all the pages in the relevant index.

  • There is also a navigation option that lists all pages.

  • Two page-searches follow; one which searches by page title, subtitle and keywords, and a search powered by Google™ which is a full-page search.

  • Our Subject Index and Site Index pages may also be helpful.

  • Finally, there is our Take Me Anywhere But Here! feature{4}.

• Lastly on the page the social media icons appear again followed by some general and page-specific information.

• With the Menu icon in the top right corner of the page, you will see some other icons which also do not scroll with the page:

  • The top one looks like this: ᐃ and if you click this the screen will scroll back to the top.

  • Beneath it is the opposite icon, ᐁ, which scrolls the screen down to the Navigation options.

  • Below that is the Help icon (？) which takes you from anywhere to the top of this section.

  • Next is the Report icon (‼) which helps you email us feedback on the page being displayed, or report any problems you encountered while using it.

  • Below this is the Configure icon (ⵙ) which links you to our configuration page where you can set some aspects of how Saint Helena Island Info functions. More here.

  • Then, where applicable, there is the First Index icon (∧) which takes you to the main page index.

  • Lastly, also where applicable, there is the Show Humour icon (☻) which takes you to the humorous image at the foot of the page.

• Where you are offered a download you might see the File Data symbol (Ⓘ), and if you hover your mouse over this symbol information about the file should appear as a tool-tip (though this depends on your browser). Note that the date shown is when the file was last updated on the site, not its creation or original publication date.

à la Carte

You can configure some aspects of Saint Helena Island Info to operate differently, or to meet visual impairment issues. To do this you need to visit our Configuration page - use the Configure icon (ⵙ) in the Control Icons (top, right). Things you can change include colour schemes{5}, fonts and font sizes.

If you have visual imparement we suggest you try Colour Scheme ‘High Contrast’ or ‘White’.

Your settings are saved on your Device for subsequent visits to the site, but please note that if you use more than one browser you will need to set up the changes on each one (or have each of them different!)

If there is anything else you would like us to make configurable please contact us. We can’t promise to implement all suggestions but we can guarantee that they all will be considered.

Subject Groups Explained

Other Indexes

If searching for content you may also find useful:

• an index to pages by subject;

• the page search facility which locates pages by words used in the title and major headings;

• our Chronology page which allows you to search our Events Database in various ways;

• the Image Search page which helps you find specific images used on the site based on their subject;

• an index to ships mentioned on the site;

• You could also try our Address Bar Search. Looking for information on Castle Gardens but don’t know the page name? Just type http://sainthelenaisland.info/?castle gardens into your browser’s address bar and you’ll be taken to the relevant page or a useful link. Works with almost any text after the question mark. Give it a go…

Content Policies

information and data are presented ‘as is’ and while we endeavour to ensure accuracy this cannot be guaranteed. No liability can be accepted for any errors in the information or data presented. For more Terms & Conditions see our page Important Information.

Where legal matters are discussed please note that this website is only providing a Layman’s Opinion. You should not take any action based on what you read on this website without first consulting a qualified legal professional.

While profanity is generally avoided parents should review all content before allowing minors to view Saint Helena Island Info as descriptions of some of our past - for example on our Slavery on St Helena and Titbits from the records pages - may upset young children.

When relating history (even recent history), in some cases we do not actually know exactly what happened and/or when. We indicate this where relevant; the phrase If you know please contact us appears often! Estimated dates are usually shown with the prefix ᱻ.

Opinions quoted on this site are not necessarily those of the editor of this website/The Website Owner.

Quoted texts and Read More content are commonly not adjusted for spelling or grammar.

Javascript must be enabled to see all content. Only limited functionality is provided for users who choose to disable Javascript.

Where events are reported Saint Helena Island Info simply presents what happened. It does not in general take a position on whether what happened should have happened. Where Saint Helena Island Info expresses an opinion it is clearly indicated as such.

Unless indicated otherwise times are shown as GMT. Whenever you see the ‘current’ time on this site you are actually seeing St Helena’s current time, which may be different from your local time. For example, if you are in Arizona (UTC-7) and your local time is 10pm, Saint Helena Island Info will give the current time as 5am the following day - the actual time on St Helena at that moment. Please note that all ‘current’ times on Saint Helena Island Info are calculated from your Device’s clock, so are only as accurate as you make them…

{6}

The week is defined as beginning on Monday, running through to the last day - Sunday. Calendars (e.g. right) reflect this.

You may see the terms ‘slave’ and ‘slaves’ on this site, which some people find objectionable. We recognise and respect that slavery is how its victims were treated, not what defined them, and we aim to refer to the victims as ‘enslaved’, but we have not amended quoted text and diagrams that use the terms ‘slave’ or ‘slaves’.

This website does not promote or advocate any faith or religious belief and takes no position on whether the claims made by any religion, organised or otherwise, are true or false. Religious buildings are described solely in terms of their interest as historic buildings or examples of more modern architecture.

We frequently link to Facebook™ pages, particularly in item credits. Facebook™ does not take down pages when they become inactive (which would trigger our Dead Links checker) and we do not have the resources to continually verify that all of these pages remain active. If you spot an inactive one please contact us.

These days it is normal to write place names without any apostrophes, even where these are clearly implied in the name. Thus what should be written Munden’s Hill - named after Governor Richard Munden - is almost always written Mundens Hill. In general we have shown place names as they are usually written, without any apostrophes that should really be there.

Weights and measurements are normally given in SI units (Km, Kg, etc.). Some older texts use the original imperial units. In general, if you hover your mouse cursor over a unit, its equivalent should appear as a tool-tip (though this depends on your browser); illustrated thus. Images are sized in pixels (px).

The metric system did not really catch on in the States, unless you count the increasing popularity of the nine-millimetre bullet.{c}

May contain nuts…

Document downloads are usually in Portable Document Format (.pdf); these can be read by most systems, but if you need a reader you can download one free from www.adobe.com. Audio downloads are normally in MPEG 1 Layer 3 (.mp3) format which is an Internet standard. Most images are in Independent JPEG Group (.jpg), Portable Network Graphics (.png) or Graphics Interchange Format (.gif) which all modern browsers can display. A few charts are in SVG (.svg) format which has been an Internet standard since 2001. Video downloads are currently all in MP4 (.mp4) format (usually H264).

Historic monetary amounts are generally converted to current values and shown as a tool-tip (as with weights and measures, described above). This conversion uses the Average Annual Nominal Earnings dataset from measuringworth.com{3}. No attempt is made to translate SHP/GBP £s into other currencies but a converter is available from www.xe.com.

For brevity, island newspapers are commonly referred to using their abbreviated name. For example, what we refer to as ‘The Independent’ is, strictly, ‘The St Helena Independent’, presumably to distinguish it from UK newspaper ‘The Independent’.

We follow the British convention that floors in buildings are designated ‘Ground’ (street level), 1st, 2nd, etc. The level below the street is the ‘Basement’.

See also Regulation.

All electrons used in the production of this site are 100% recycled and come from sustainable sources. No wombats were harmed in the making of this site{7}. Nutrition Information: Gluten-free; Dairy-free; Energy 0; Carbohydrates 0 (of which, sugars 0); fat 0; salt 0; does not contain nuts (but edited in a place where nuts are consumed). Best before .

Adverts

You will note that there are no adverts on this site.

Unlike some other St Helena sites we do not need to sell you stuff to support Saint Helena Island Info, our (few) costs are sponsored by Burgh House Limited. If you wish to reach the people of St Helena we suggest you contact our local media.

Earnings Disclosure

John Turner earns NO commission or other income from any content presented on this site.

If you have a question

Before you contact us with your question, perhaps we have already answered it? Firstly there is the information on our information pages - see How To Use This Site… (above) for how to find stuff. For more general questions check our Frequently Asked Questions about St Helena, Frequently Asked Questions about this site and Help With pages for answers to many common questions we are asked about Saint Helena Island Info and about St Helena itself

If none of these answers your question please feel free to contact us.

Island History

Material we have used

Information is reproduced here for educational non-commercial use only; all copyrights are acknowledged. Excerpts fall within the doctrine of ‘fair use’.

Information and images presented on this site are gleaned from sources too numerous to list, many on the Internet but all in the public domain. Acknowledgement is offered to:

• ‘St Helena 500’, by Robin Gill & Percy Teale, published in 1997;

• The St Helena Heritage Society database;

• The island’s newspapers{3};

• An online database maintained by Ian Bruce, from which many of the downloadable historical documents are sourced, and Ian’s invaluable help with research and tracking down obscure documents;

• The blogs of J.C. Grimshaw and John Tyrrell (who also writes for ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{8});

• The writings of the various island historians.

Some images are sourced from the Wikipedia (and related projects) and are used under the Creative Commons Licence{3}.

We source some images and other content from the Internet, but only from public domain sources and we always respect copyright where stated. If you think we have breached your copyright or used your copyrighted material without your permission please contact us and we will advise on how access our ‘Alleged Breach of Copyright’ procedure.

Updates, Site History & Status

Below: Update policy Brief History of Saint Helena Island Info… Current status

Update policy

We update this site whenever sufficient changes (new content; improved images and layout; even corrected errors!) have accumulated. Saint Helena Island Info was last updated on @@JAVASITELASTUPDATED@@. We do our best to keep the information on this site up-to-date, but with pages to review it is probable that the occasional superseded item will slip through. If you spot anything that needs updating please contact us.

It can take as long as two hours to upload the updates because of St Helena’s slow Internet connection and, although we try to upload in a continuity-friendly manner, during this time you may experience issues accessing the site, for which we apologise. When completed we announce these updates on social media. After we update the site you may need to force your browser to refresh the page{9}!

You can see which pages were updated in the most recent release and also see when pages were first added.

A Brief History of Saint Helena Island Info…

Site years ago, June 2010 (Click to explore)

This site was first registered on 1st July 2009. Initially the site had 19 pages, 11 of which were information pages, and 77 images. You can actually explore the June 2010 version of the site - click on the screen-shot (right).

The current colours, layout and logo came in 2012, and by October 2012 the site was up to 35 pages (24 information pages) and 210 images. By the end of 2014 there were 87 pages (77 information pages); 28 downloads and 1,306 images. 100 pages was reached in July 2015, 200 pages in November 2017 and the site has continued to grow steadily ever since.

In December 2018 changes were made to improve access from mobile Devices. The recommended minimum viewing width was reduced to 720 pixels and the fixed menu on the left was replaced by a requestable menu triggered from a floating icon (☰, top, right). Around ⅓ of our users connect with mobile Devices.

At the beginning of 2020 we posted a notice for users that choose not to enable Javascript, warning that we would disable additional non-Javascript features unless we heard reasons not to. We heard nothing so the May 2020 release removed all additional processing for users that do not enable Javascript. For such users the site should still function but some content is no longer available. Modern browsers enable Javascript by default, and on some it is actually quite difficult to disable, so we were confident this would not affect many, if any, users. We have received no complaints.

User Configuration (Saint Helena Island Info à la Carte) came in July 2020 - use the Configure icon (ⵙ) in the Control Icons (top, right).

Current status

It is accessed from all over the world - recently the top countries were (in descending order): Great Britain (UK), United States, South Africa, Germany, Australia, France, Russian Federation, Canada, Hungary, Italy, Poland, India, Singapore, Nigeria, Finland, Switzerland, Ireland, Brazil, Netherlands, Sweden, New Zealand, Korea, Republic of, Thailand, China, Belgium, Turkey and 174 other countries. The top search topics were: Napoleon; jobs; the airport/flights; the cost of living and moving here; a good place to live and our climate. Daily usage is currently averaging around 5,500 pages from 1,600 visitors (45,000 ‘hits’) - 170GB of data per month. Page usage by hour of the day is fairly consistent around the clock:

Regulation

NB: Saint Helena Island Info is hosted in the UK so is not, technically, ‘delivered…from St Helena’; however it is our policy to fully comply with St Helena’s media regulations.

Beware of impostors!

We are aware of other sites using similar URLs to ours, some of which also include out-of-date copies of our content and one has even stolen our images! These are nothing to do with us. They seem to exist purely to sell you stuff; we exist purely to provide accurate up-to-date information about St Helena. There is nothing we can do to prevent these imitators; we just treat it as recognition that our site is the leading independent site about St Helena and is the one to copy! BEWARE: These copycats may not be safe to use; often such sites download viruses or other malware to your Device. As long as you make sure you only visit http://sainthelenaisland.info/ and ignore the mimics you can be assured of the best and most up-to-date information from a safe-to-use website.

‘What the Saints did next…’

(What’s happening inside St Helena)

The history of St Helena and its people is continuing. This website can’t provide up-to-the-minute news about what’s happening inside St Helena, and there is no need for us to do so because sources of St Helena news are readily available on the Internet:

By the time the future is easy to predict it’s history!{d}

Technical Information

Below: SSL Certificate Standards Conformance Encoding Usability Browser Testing Site Index Error Page Work In Progress Javascript ‘Cookies’ LocalStorage Site Maintenance Access from Mobile Devices

SSL Certificate

This site does not collect any personal data from users, and does not allow users to make any financial transactions, so an SSL Certificate (https://) is not required.

Standards Conformance

This site is sample-validated for conformance with the XHTML 1.0 Transitional standard. If you encounter any conformance issues please contact us.

Encoding

Pages on this site are encoded in utf-8.

Usability

This site uses Cascading Style Sheets. You can therefore control text size and colours using your web browser. Please refer to the documentation for your web browser for further information.

Images are normally limited to a maximum dimension of 10000 pixels but maps and diagrams are permitted to be larger.

Please contact us to report any usability problems, specifying as much technical information (OS, browser version, etc.) as possible.
Thank you.

Browser Testing

Features are tested using: ⋅ Google Chrome™; ⋅ Firefox™; and ⋅ Opera™{10}. All features should work in these browsers but some may not work in others. Read about browsers here.

Site Index

A full site index appears here.

Error Page

Unresolved URLs are directed here: Error Page

Work In Progress

Please note that some pages on this site may be under construction and that these pages may not yet work fully as advertised. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

We welcome feedback, so please contact us with your comments on our work so far.

Javascript

Javascript is a technology that allows websites to display dynamic content, e.g. date-based or user-selected displays. Saint Helena Island Info makes use of Javascript to deliver useful content so please note that some features described on this page will only work if you have Javascript enabled in your browser.

‘Cookies’

This site does not use ‘cookies’. However, the third-party products (e.g. Google™) used on this site may employ cookies, outside our control.

Note that this site does use the Javascript feature localStorage to retain parameters, as set on the Configuration page accessed with the ⵙ icon - see the Control Icons (top, right). Read more about localStorage.

localStorage

Configuration parameters (accessed with the ⵙ icon - see the Control Icons (top, right)) are stored in your browser using the Javascript facility ‘localStorage’. While this is in some ways similar to using ‘Cookies’ we do not use it to store any information about you, about your browser or about the Device you use, so it does not compromise your privacy.

Site Maintenance

This site was created and is maintained for us by Burgh House Software (part of Burgh House Limited), to whom all technical queries should be directed.

Access from Mobile Devices

This site should be fully accessible from any mobile Device with a screen size of at least 720px{11}. Around ⅓ of our users connect with mobile Devices.

Who is ‘we’?

Editor, John Turner

Saint Helena Island Info is operated and edited by John Turner, who lives in Napoleon Street, moved to St Helena with his family in 2005 and aims to stay here for the rest of his life. Many have contributed content to the site and we thank them all.

The site is run from the editor of this website’s family home in Jamestown, which is really not equipped to welcome unexpected callers, so if you want to meet in person please contact us to make an arrangement.

Read More

Article: The original ‘Homepage of St Helena’

John Ekwall, 1996

In 1990 Radio St Helena did its first Radio St Helena Day short-wave broadcast to the world. And half-way across the world this broadcast reached an enthusiastic radio listener in Sweden by the name of John Ekwall. John was fascinated to hear live radio from St Helena, such a tiny speck in the vast South Atlantic Ocean. John’s fascination with St Helena had begun a while before and he had begun corresponding with the people at Radio St Helena. In 1992 he visited for the first time, and again in 1997.

In addition to his radio listening activities John was also an ‘early adopter’ of the Internet. In 1996, with websites just beginning to spring up around the world but with the Internet still not generally available on St Helena, John decided that he would create the world’s first website about St Helena. And thus, later that year, the ‘Homepage of St Helena’, hosted from Sweden, was born.

Initially much of the site was focussed on Radio St Helena and its annual short-wave transmissions but the site quickly grew into a comprehensive guide to the island; hence the popular name, the ‘Homepage of St Helena’.

John continued maintaining the site until around 2014 when other pressures got the better of him. He handed back the domain name at the beginning of 2017{12}. Later, regretting his decision, John created a new version of the site at joesweden.info/sthelena.

This is the site as it was in late 1996:

Double-click to select: