Historians of St Helena

Recording our past

History is nothing but gossip about the past, with the hope that it might be true.{c}

Over the years various people have taken it upon themselves to document our history

We have included all the general historians, both professional and otherwise, for whom we know details. We have intentionally excluded those who really wrote only on a single subject, e.g. our ecology, Wirebirds or Napoleon - in the latter case because the list would be effectively endless! The date given is (as far as we can ascertain) when they started work and they are listed in this order.

Historical

Below: Jan Huygen van Linschoten, 1596 Francis Duncan, 1805 Thomas Henry Brooke, 1824 John Charles Melliss, 1875 Hudson Ralph Janisch, 1885 Emily Louise Jackson, 1905 Dr. Philip Gosse, 1938 Geoffrey Charles Kitching, 1947 Percy Teale, 1950s Trevor W. Hearl, 1960s Hugh Crallan, 1974 Ken Denholm, 1990s David Leslie Smallman, 2004 Barbara B. George BEM

Jan Huygen van Linschoten, 1596

Linschoten

What we believe to be the earliest ‘history’ of our island is from 1596 (before most of the island’s history had actually happened!) written by Jan Huygen van Linschoten, a Dutch traveller. It was based on his visit here, arriving 12th May 1589 and leaving towards the Azores on 21st May, in the return leg of a much broader tour including four years in Goa. The description appears in a book, Linschoten’s ‘Itinerario’{1}. Strictly it’s not a history; it’s a description - he wrote extensively about the routes to the east at the end of the 16th Century. We reproduce below the section on St Helena.

Linschoten also had a role in promoting the (incorrect) idea that our island was discovered on 21st May 1502 - see our page Discovery of St Helena for more.

It should be noted that many other descriptions of St Helena were written at about this time, including one by Thomas Cavendish.

Francis Duncan, 1805

Duncan’s ‘A Description of the Island of St Helena containing Observations on its Singular Structure and Formation; and an Account of its Climate, Natural History and Inhabitants’, dated 1st May 1805, was the source for many later histories, including that by Brooke. Indeed, Brooke always claimed Duncan’s was the island’s first history, and current historians believe this to be correct.

Francis Duncan joined The East India Company’s service in June 1788 as an army surgeon, serving in India. On his way home from India in 1801 he spent five weeks on St Helena, and this inspired the writing of ‘A Description of the Island of St Helena…’.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.

Thomas Henry Brooke, 1824

Thomas Henry Brooke arrived on St Helena in c.1793, the nephew of serving Governor Robert Brooke (1787-1801){2}. He was appointed Secretary to the Government of St Helena in c.1788 (until 1834) and acting Governor in the interregnum between Governor Lowe and Governor Walker, and again between Governor Walker and Governor Dallas. He lived at Brooke Hill, in what is now Alarm Forest, drawn in 1809 by Burchell and currently a farm, then in 1821 he built and moved into Prospect House.

He wrote ‘A History of the Island of St Helena’, published in 1808, a revised edition of which was issued just after Napoleon’s death, ‘A History of the Island of St Helena, 2nd Edition’, published in 1824{3}. Subsequent historians quote extensively from this work.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.

John Charles Melliss, 1875

John Charles Melliss was born on St Helena, served as an officer in the Royal Engineers and was appointed Government Surveyor in St Helena from 1860-1871. He is featured on our page Important People.

His father, G.W. Melliss, published a collection of drawings of St Helena: ‘Views of St Helena’, by G.W. Melliss{4}, published in 1857, and John published the far more detailed ‘St Helena: A Physical, Historical and Topographical Description of the Island{5}’.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.

Hudson Ralph Janisch, 1885

Hudson Janisch Memorial{d}

Hudson Ralph Janisch was Governor Janisch from 1873 to 1884. The island’s only island-born Governor, you can learn more about him on our page The Governor of St Helena.

A year after his death The Guardian Newspaper published ‘Extracts from the St Helena Records’, compiled by Janisch. Although not a history as such - it is literally, as the title suggests, details reproduced from the records, totally without commentary - it is nevertheless an invaluable source for historians and hence is included here.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.

Emily Louise Jackson, 1905

Emily Louise{6} Jackson was born as Emily Warren in Paignton, Devon, UK in 1862. She came to St Helena in 1889, as a schoolteacher and later Headmistress of Schools. On 11th December 1889 she married widower Tom Jackson (the island’s chemist). She had a key role in the creation of the island’s lace making industry, spending eight months in the UK learning lace making and returning to St Helena in the late 1890s to start teaching local people.

It is not clear how she got from this to writing a history of St Helena, but she did. She wrote ‘St Helena, The Historic Island, From Its Discovery To The Present Date’, published in 1905. It updated the work of Duncan, 100 years earlier, and many of the photographs in the book were also taken by her{7}.

Emily had no formal training as a historian{8} and some have criticised her book. Philip Gosse described it as:

A work full of useful information but sadly in need of editing. It lacks an index and though profusely illustrated by photographs, far too many being of groups of British soldiers who guarded the Boer PoWs. Undue space is allotted to this subject in the text. All the same it is a useful work of reference.

Alexander Schulenburg wrote:

Although her work is much valued for its documentary extracts and photographs, the book as a whole is terribly ill-organised. For all intents and purposes, Jackson had done what the historian Finberg has called paying homage to the muse of history after their fashion by serving up the contents of their notebooks in a kind of substitute for narrative.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.
You can also download and readⒾ her later work, ‘A Souvenir of St Helena’.

Dr. Philip Gosse, 1938

A contemporary of Kitching’s was Dr. Philip Gosse, who came to the island in 1937. A keen naturalist he was concerned that so little attention was being paid to the island’s endemic species. Gosse realised that the endangered endemics could only be saved by being given government protection and addressed the subject with Governor Spencer Davis, as a result of which in May 1937 the Government of St Helena risked local resentment by passing an Ordinance ‘For the Preservation of Forests’. Gosse referred to goats as these horned and four-legged locusts.

A school was named after him, the ‘Gosse Central School’ located where the Bishop of St Helena currently resides, but it only operated from 1941-1946.

Gosse’s visit to the island left him angered at the destitute condition of most of the inhabitants, and at the vastly unequal distribution of land.

As with others featured on this page, it is not clear how Gosse got from this to writing a history of St Helena, but he did. His book, ‘St Helena 1502-1938’, was drawn from extensive archival research and from personal papers given to him by descendants of prominent islanders, also including the work of Kitching.

For many years it was considered the definitive history on the island as a whole and was re-printed in the early 2000s with an introduction by Trevor Hearl. It has more recently been criticised for its inaccuracies. Dr. Alexander Schulenburg, for example, wrote that Gosse employed narrative licence and enlivened of the story by creating details that cannot possibly be known from the archival sources.

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ.

Curiously, and as far as we can tell entirely coincidentally, Dr. Gosse did much of his medical training in Colchester - a town connected to St Helena in that we share a common Patron Saint, Saint Helena.

Geoffrey Charles Kitching, 1947

Geoffrey Charles Kitching came to St Helena in 1932 as the Government Secretary. He began researching St Helena history because:

When I arrived on St Helena in 1932, I found that the Government Secretary was under a crippling handicap. There was nobody to tell me, nor was there any book in which one might read, what had really happened during the past 100 years. I had to find out everything for myself, so I read every despatch, in or out, since 1824, and the results are embodied in this volume.

This seems curious, given that many detailed histories should have been available to him, including those by Jackson, Melliss and Brooke. It is probable that he meant that all of the foregoing borrowed extensively from Duncan. But, for whatever reasons he set about combing through government Archives and doing the research himself. From 1932 to 1947 he researched and wrote ‘A Handbook and Gazetteer of The Island of St Helena, Including a Short History of the Island under the Crown 1834-1902’, published in 1947. It should be noted that, as Kitching himself points out:

I have continued these studies since leaving the Island and the book now requires re-casting in different form, and much revision in light of later knowledge, which I hope to undertake when I retire from the Service. It has never been proof read.

It is not thought that this was ever done. Certainly the work was never formally published. It is possible that Kitchen deferred to Gosse, who had published a little earlier (using much of Kitching’s material).

You can download and read a copy of this workⒾ (based on Kitching’s notes, found at Plantation House in the 1980s.)

Percy Teale, 1950s

Dr. Percival Leslie Teale was director of Public Works from 1957 until 1960, returning to the UK to become a university lecturer. In 1972 he wrote a Master’s Thesis: ‘Architecture on St Helena, A History of the Development of the Island with Special Reference to Building Civil and Military Engineering Works’. A significant portion of this thesis is devoted to the histories of the historic houses on the island (much of this information is drawn directly from Kitching). His later PhD thesis is a very important work on buildings and their historical context and he produced quite a number of books and booklets, including ‘St Helena Buildings’ in 1976. Percy was assisted in his research by Wilfred Thatham, government archivist during the 1970s.

Percy was also an enthusiastic Radio Amateur and in 1958 made the island’s first known radio broadcast of a public meeting in the Cinema Hall in Jamestown. He also rebuilt the old Cannister building (the old building can be seen in the Memorial Fountain photo and was a dwelling for several families), into what now houses our Tourist Information Office; it opened on 2nd November 1959, still called The Cannister.

He co-authored ‘St Helena 500’ - a reference work for the historical information on this website - with Robin Gill{9}. A report in the St Helena News at the time of first publication, December 1999, records:

The authors have spent many years researching through archival material in London, Lisbon, Amsterdam and elsewhere overseas with many visits to the Island since 1957.

We currently do not have a downloadable copy of this work. Printed copies are available from the Museum of St Helena.

Percy Teale died in 2023.

Trevor W. Hearl, 1960s

Trevor Hearl

Trevor Hearl, having previously been a war correspondent, became the History Lecturer at Cheltenham College. He came to St Helena in 1969 as an education advisor when the College formed a very successful link with St Helena’s Education Department, in which St Helena’s teachers were trained at Cheltenham College and advisors came to St Helena to support the development of education here. His contribution to education on St Helena was immense and, in recognition of what he did, the Library at Prince Andrew School carries his name: ‘The Trevor Hearl Library’. He also provided many of that Library’s books.

Trevor went as far as re-printing, at his own expense, Philip Gosse’s ‘St Helena 1502-1938’. He also contributed to the St Helena Heritage Society and the St Helena National Trust. He became the authority on the history of St Helena and would be in contact with numerous people and organisations outside St Helena answering questions and promoting St Helena, including mentoring many of the other individuals in the Currently Working section, below. According to Dan Yon, maker of the film The 100 Men, Trevor collected, over the years, virtually every written, photographic, visual and other work produced on or about St Helena. His knowledge was immense and many features on this website have benefitted from his researches.

Trevor died on 24th January 2007, at his home in Cheltenham, UK. Before he died he deposited all his collected research papers with Rhodes House in Oxford. In so doing he leaves a legacy for which St Helena will be forever grateful (Dan Yon).

A collection of his writings was recently published under the title ‘The St Helena Britannica’ - as far as we know the only consolidated publication of his work.
We currently do not have a downloadable copy of this work.

For many detailed tributes to Trevor Hearl see ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10} #34, Spring 2007.

Hugh Crallan, 1974

Hugh Crallan{e}

In 1974 the architect Hugh Crallan was commissioned by Governor Thomas Oates to come to St Helena to draw up an illustrated list of scheduled buildings in St Helena of historic and/or architectural interest and to advise the Governor about suitable legislation for preserving these. The resulting report, ‘Island of St Helena: Listing and Preservation of Buildings of Architectural and Historic Interest,’, commonly known as the ‘Crallan Report’, has become the guidebook to the community of people concerned with historic preservation on St Helena.

He assigned grades to each of the historic structures, mirroring the British system of grading the architectural and historic merit of protected buildings. In his research Crallan drew from Kitching, Thatham and Teale, and also used his own judgment based on the architectural features of the buildings. The dates given for houses on Saint Helena Island Info are generally drawn from the Crallan Report and we have also used many of the photographs he took.

Although not a history of St Helena the Crallan Report remains an important historical work, worthy of inclusion here.

You can download and readⒾ this work{e}.

The intention behind creating the Historic Environment Record (HER) was to update, and therefore replace the 1974 Crallan Report as the definitive reference source used when assessing Planning Applications. However, although the HER was completed as required in 2012, at the time of writing the HER has still not been adopted for this purpose, and the Crallan Report remains the definitive planning document, despite its many limitations.

Ken Denholm, 1990s

Ken Denholm was an Australian who took a particular interest in St Helena history. He visited several times in the 1990s and was the author of several publications about St Helena’s past, including ‘South Atlantic Haven, A Maritime History for the Island of St Helena’ (1994), ‘An Island Fortress’Ⓘ, published in 2006 and ‘From Signal Gun to Satellite’ (1994). He was working on the history of the St Helena Flax Industry when he died; the St Helena National Trust has copies of his papers.

David Leslie Smallman, 2004

David Leslie Smallman was Governor of St Helena from 1995 to 1999. He wrote the book ‘Quincentenary: A Story of St Helena, 1502-2002’, published in March 2004 for the island’s Quincentenary celebrations. The book summarises the island’s early history, as already documented by the authors above, and brings the history up-to-date as at 2002. It remains the most recent compete published history of St Helena, though it is now known to carry forward many of the errors and omissions of the authors above on which it is based. Some review comments are worth considering:

Smallman is less concerned with providing a concise overview of St Helena’s history, than to place St Helena’s present day challenges into a historical context, both locally and, for which he is to be commended, Empire-wide. Smallman’s emphasis, hence, is on economic and political development, rather than social, military or naval history. [᠁] The reason for Smallman’s focus can perhaps be found in the book’s dedication to his wife Sandi, where Smallman refers to his book as a journey of catharsis, prompted no doubt by his own, occasionally turbulent, time on St Helena. That Smallman needed to purge himself from his frustrations by affording them expression is evident throughout his book.

{f}

David Smallman certainly did have quite a hard time as Governor of St Helena, and this may have coloured his thinking, reflected in the book. For example, talking about Saints, he writes (unjustly, in the editor of this website’s opinion):

…they share with all isolated and consanguineous communities a parochial turn of mind, an obsessive concern with the activities of their fellow islanders, and what they may in turn think of them. This obsession extinguishes any real possibility of their exercising impartial administration of rules or regulations, which exist for others and not one self. Their inclination to small-mindedness, what might be termed their infinite capacity for thinking small…

We currently do not have a downloadable copy of this work.

Hardcover: 192 pages
Publisher: Patten Press (March 15, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1872229476
ISBN-13: 978-1872229478

The author was Governor of St Helena from 1995-1999.

In 2018 David Smallman also published ‘A View from the Castle’ (New Generation Publishing, ISBN 978-1-78719-716-9), focussing on his own Governorship from 1995 to 1999{11}.

Barbara B. George BEM

Barbara George came to St Helena as Barbara Montgomerie in the 1960s, as a science teacher under the VSO scheme. Having married a local Saint they settled on St Helena. In addition to raising a family and being the first Director of the St Helena National Trust she took to researching and publishing pamphlets featuring aspects of St Helena history, including such subjects as Jacob’s Ladder and the Boer PoWs.
We currently do not have a downloadable copy of these booklets but some are available to purchase in print on St Helena.

Barbara also wrote frequently for the St Helena Herald. She was awarded the BEM in the 2020 Queen’ Birthday Honours. She ceased working in the early 2020s.

Currently Working

There are many people working today on the history of St Helena. By listing some we run the risk of offending those we miss. We are working on a list and present below what must be considered for now as a work-in-progress! If you are one of the ones we have inadvertently overlooked, firstly we apologise for not including you, and secondly if you would like to contact us and tell us about yourself and what subjects you cover we’ll happily add you in.

Here we go with the list we currently have (in alphabetic order of surname):

Below: Edward Baldwin MBE Ian Bruce Colin Fox Chris and Sheila Hillman Ian Mathieson Dr. Alexander Schulenburg National Trust Professor Dan Yon Bloggers Virtual Library and Archives

Edward Baldwin MBE

Edward has an MA from the University of Edinburgh in Ancient History and Archaeology. He has also studied metallurgy and metal conservation. He has been involved with the Friends of St Helena in the UK, the St Helena National Trust and the St Helena Heritage Society. He was awarded the MBE in a ceremony at Plantation House in April 2019 (photo, right).

Although primarily a source of information on St Helena’s military history, Edward also writes on a variety of other subjects. He also writes for ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}.

In July 2021 Edward kindly donated much of his personal collection of St Helena items to the Museum of St Helena, including his Lafitte Map - the copy-from-memory made by Lafitte after his original was confiscated. All the items in this generous donation are now on display at the Museum of St Helena.

Ian Bruce

Ian Bruce is the son of Norman T. Bruce, born at Briars Village, the grandson of Thomas R. Bruce, postmaster for 30 years from 1898 and designer of the popular 1922-1937 ship and rocks George V stamp series and the great-grandson of George R. Bruce, harbour master for 27 years from 1851. For more see his family history article (listed below).

Ian frequently publishes articles on St Helena history in ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}. Saint Helena Island Info sometimes assists Ian in his research.

We have included as downloads many articles by Ian, including:

Colin Fox

Colin Fox formerly edited ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10} and also contributes articles of his own on historical subjects related to St Helena.

In 2006 he published ‘The Bennett Letters: A 19th century family in St Helena, England and the Cape’ which was an account of his forebear, Captain James Bennett and his children. James served in the St Helena regiment, initially in 1789 as a private and later as an officer up to his death in 1835. He purchased Chubb’s Spring in 1814 and in 1826 moved to Maldivia. The estate remained in the family until 1890. Of his nine children one daughter, Eliza, married first Henry Solomon and on his early death married Sir Patrick Ross. A son, George Brooks Bennett rose to high rank in the British army commissariat mainly at the Cape.

In 2014 Colin edited (with Edward Baldwin) ‘A Precarious Livelihood: St Helena 1834: East India Company outpost to Crown Colony’. This was an edited transcription of a report written by HR Brandreth and E Walpole to advise the British government on ways to reduce expenditure and make the island self supporting.

He recently published a further book, ‘A Bitter Draught: St Helena and the Abolition of Slavery’ (published by Friends of St Helena, 2017 ISBN 978-0-9574918-2-3).

Chris and Sheila Hillman

Chris is a former Director of the St Helena National Trust. In addition to various articles on subjects such as signal stations, Chris and Sheila are putting together a database of names connected with St Helena based on the church records, memorials, staff of The East India Company, clerics, governors, passengers and ships. The database went live on the Friends of St Helena website in January 2020.

Ian Mathieson

Ian is the author of Friends of St Helena publication, St Helena Connections, and often writes about current affairs as well as historical matters. He describes himself as:

A geographer with an interest in how places work and why they are the way they are; not an historian.

His 1993 book Exploring St Helena: A Walker’s Guide (ISBN O 904614 49 2), with Laurence Carter, is still available and largely still relevant to the St Helena visitor.

Dr. Alexander Schulenburg

Dr. Schulenburg is a social anthropologist and historian with research interests in, inter alia, St Helena; slavery, especially on St Helena; and the East India Company. He has published widely on the history of St Helena, including for ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}, which he edited from 2001-10. In 2008 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society in recognition of his scholarly contributions to the study of St Helena and London. He first visited St Helena in 1993 as part of his doctoral research in social anthropology. His full biography and a list of his publications can be found at www.historian.london.

He also runs the St Helena Institute website with its St Helena family history forum www.yahoo.com & twitter.com/‌StHLNInstitute. Alexander is married to Darlene, a St Helenian.

St Helena National Trust

The St Helena National Trust has published many leaflets and articles about aspects of St Helena’s history, some of which can be downloaded from Saint Helena Island Info. Others should be available from the St Helena National Trust website.

Professor Dan Yon

Professor Dan Yon is unusual in that he is a Saint researching into St Helena’s history. Probably best known for the film The 100 Men, which tracks the lives of 100 male Saints who left the island in 1949 for work in England. It tells their stories and how they were treated - not always well - based on interviews with many of the men themselves, or their close relatives.

Daniel Yon is Associate Professor at York University, jointly appointed to both the Faculty of Education and the Department of Anthropology. He is also an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Cape Town. His research and teaching interests include school ethnography; anthropology of race and racism, diasporas and cosmopolitisms, anthropology and film.

Bloggers

We also recommend the blogs of J.C. Grimshaw and John Tyrrell (who has also written for ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}), both of which provide an invaluable source of factual but readable information on the history of St Helena{13}.

Brief Mentions

There are some other people and sources worthy of a brief mention:

• Governor Alexander Beatson’s book ‘Tracts relative to the Island of St Helena’ (1816) is worth a mention. It is mostly concerned with the state of the island in the early 1800s, and as such is an invaluable reference, but it also contains some earlier historical and botanical information{14}.

• Benjamin Grant’s book ‘A Few Notes on St Helena and Descriptive Guide’ (1883) contains some useful information and a few early photographs.

• Mr Wilfred Thatham was a retired Headmaster from Eton who lived here with his wife and was government archivist during the 1970s. In addition to helping Percy Teale and Hugh Crallan he also did research for the benefit of various island families, compiling information on their specific houses.

• Stephen Royle was a professor at Belfast University and probably his most important work was the book ‘The Company’s Island’ a history of The East India Company period of governance of St Helena. More detail at pure.qub.ac.uk/‌portal/‌en/‌persons/‌stephen-royle(6008909d-3c48-4f4b-afa4-3f26ae06697a)/‌publications.html. He also wrote a good biography of Dr. Arnold.

• Dr. Andrew Pearson headed the Ruperts Bay excavations. An archaeologist by training, he wrote about the history of the ‘Liberated African’ period.

• Tony Cross also wrote a complete history of the island, albeit in somewhat abridged form, in his book ‘St Helena including Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha’. He also wrote for ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}.

• Beau W. Rowlands wrote a book ‘Fernão Lopez’ published in 2007, including information gleaned from the records at The Vatican, and also ‘The Birds of St Helena’ in 1998. He is also described by Robin Gill as having a fantastic mind, and would never forget a date whether it was way back in history, or somebody’s birthday.

• Robin Castell, during his lifetime owner of Prince’s Lodge, has published many illustrated books on St Helena history, all of which are available in print from the Museum of St Helena. More at www.robincastell.com.

• Rev. Edward Cannan published ‘Churches of the South Atlantic Islands, 1502-1991’ in 1992, which provides some interesting details, strictly from an Anglican perspective.

• Probably the definitive work on the history of education here is Dorothy Evans’ 1994 book ‘Schooling in South Atlantic Islands, 1661-1992’. The section on St Helena alone covers 194 pages with only a few photographs. We used it extensively when compiling our page Education.

• Although not intended as a historical work, Oswell Blakeston’s 1957 book ‘Isle of St Helena’ - written about his visit to the island - is now, because of its age, a useful guide to St Helena at the end of the 1950s.

• Similarly Ian Baker’s book ‘One Man’s Island’ (Wilton 65, ISBN 0-947828-14-1) is notionally about the island’s Geology but is also a delightful snapshot of the island both in the 1990s when it was written but also from earlier visits in the 1960s.

• The late Nick Thorpe is worthy of a mention because of his tireless support for our St Helena Heritage Society.

For the record, although the editor of this website has done a fair amount of historical research to compile Saint Helena Island Info he does not and would not claim to be an Historian. Just a compiler of work done by others…

St Helena Virtual Library and Archives

The ‘St Helena Virtual Library and Archive’ re-appeared in August 2019, having been unavailable since 2013. This is also a good source of reference information, but is not apparently being updated.

Saints

You may have noted that almost none of the people mentioned on this page are Saints.

The Definitive Island History?

With the many histories of St Helena listed above (and maybe more we haven’t discovered) people sometimes ask Which is the Definitive Island History? Sadly, the answer is There isn’t one.

There are many reasons why we say this:

• Firstly, most of the island histories listed above are based on the ones that preceded it, often with little or no original research. Errors are treated as facts and simply carried forward; not least the error that the island was discovered on 21st May 1502.

• Secondly, some of the above were written primarily to document an at-the-time recent event. For example the exile of Napoleon (Brooke), the exile of the Boer PoWs (Jackson), or the near destitution brought about by the withdrawal of the Garrison at the beginning of the 20th Century (Gosse). They therefore give improper weight to these events and thus provide an unbalanced picture of our history. As a more extreme example, Beatson’s ‘Tracts relative to the Island of St Helena’, published in 1816, devotes its first 200 pages to improvements to the island’s agriculture and animal husbandry - the document’s intended subject - and then a further 90 pages to a detailed account of the Spirits Rebellion, 1811.

We think this may be because none of them was written by a qualified historian. Brooke was a Government Secretary; Jackson was a collaboration between a Lace-teacher and a Pharmacist; Gosse was a naturalist. Qualified historians have been involved in researching our history (Schulenburg, for example, and Yon) but none of them has attempted a complete island history.

In our opinion, if a definitive island history is going to arise it may well originate within the realms of the Friends of St Helena, but at the time of writing we are aware of no plans.

Read More

Below: Wirebird Magazine Article: A Brief Description of St Helena, 1596

Wirebird Magazine

Each year members of the Friends of St Helena receive free copies of ‘Wirebird’, the magazine of Friends of St Helena{10}. These feature many history articles on St Helena or related subjects, which will be invaluable to anybody interested in St Helena history. The past editions of Wirebird have a searchable index on the Friends of St Helena website. For anyone interested in our history membership of Friends of St Helena is highly recommended.

Article: A Brief Description of St Helena, 1596

Text by Jan Huygen van Linschoten.