Visitor Information Come and discover our island It’s better to see something once than to hear about it a thousand times{c}

St Helena is approximately 1,900Km west of the Angola/Namibia border, in the South Atlantic Ocean

Why come here

One of the giant tortoises at Plantation House

Is St Helena just: An unremarkable island famous only as the place to which Napoleon was exiled in 1815{2}? If you think so, please keep reading…

On this site we are pleased to provide information for anyone considering visiting St Helena, one of the world’s most remote inhabited islands. St Helena’s environment is truly remarkable, from dramatic cliff tops to a sub-tropical interior, all of it surrounded by pristine seas and where the air-quality is unimaginably high, even in the City of Jamestown. St Helena offers world class opportunities for activities such as walking/hiking, ornithology, marine trips, Diving and Fishing. Our incredibly clear skies also attract astronomers and you can explore our many forts, batteries, other military installations and other Historic Buildings. Maybe you’re interested in the darker parts of our history and you may also be interested in our pages indexed from Island Pictures. For starters read A Very Brief History of our island then perhaps our page Quick Facts, and if the only thing you know about St Helena is that Napoleon Bonaparte died here, you may be interested to read some fascinating facts about him.

Want to try our local food in your own home? We have some local recipes.

How to get here

The many ways to get to St Helena are discussed on our page Getting Here, and they include flying here!.

Its appearance from the sea is very unpromising - inaccessible rocks and stupendous crags frowning from every side… but once you ascend Ladder Hill Road, everything changes, and all seems enchantment… fruitful valleys, cultivated hills and diversified scenery of every description.{d}

Facts about St Helena

Below: Can I bring my pet dog/cat/parrot/elephant? Time Zone Districts Environment Money Weather

Can I bring my pet dog/cat/parrot/elephant?

It’s not impossible, but because of disease control the process is rather complicated - too much so to summarise it here. If you really can’t be separated from your furry/scaly friend, you are best to contact the Senior Veterinary Officer at the Agriculture and Natural Resources Division - Tel (+290) 24724.

Of course, Governor Gurr (2007-2011) had no trouble getting permission to bring his family dog, Stanley…☺(right)

Time Zone

St Helena is permanently on GMT. We do not use Daylight Saving Time.

{3}

Districts

St Helena is divided into eight administrative districts, each of which has a page on this site. In alphabetic order they are: Alarm Forest, Blue Hill, Half Tree Hollow, Jamestown, Levelwood, Longwood, Sandy Bay and St Pauls.

Environment

The world was not left to us by our parents, it was lent to us by our children.{e}

St Helena’s natural history and unique flora and fauna are discussed on ourpages indexed from Island Nature , in particular our page Endemic Species. The St Helena’s Nature Conservation Group (SNCG) and St Helena National Trust websites also have useful information.

In 2022 St Helena was declared the Best Eco-location and Sustainable Tourism Destination in the World Commerce Review Awards.

Money

The local currency in St Helena is the Saint Helena Pound (SHP) which is linked at parity to the British Pound (Sterling; GBP). The £ symbol is used. Notes and coins are similar in denomination and appearance to their UK counterparts, though St Helena is not yet using plastic banknotes. Learn more about the money we use on St Helena. A currency converter is available from XE.com.

Banking services on St Helena{4} are provided by the Bank of St Helena from whom further information may be obtained.

The financial year for the Government of St Helena and all businesses/organisations runs from 1st April until 31st March. We are currently in financial year .

Weather

The weather on St Helena is one of the island’s more unusual features. It can be sunny and calm in one place, and wet and windy only a few Km away. Learn more on our page Weather and climate. Remember also that St Helena is in the Southern Hemisphere, so our summer runs from (roughly) November through to May.

Take a tour!

The ride or drive along the mountain-tops, from Longwood across Sandy Bay ridge, and by Government House to Ladder Hill and Jamestown, is, for beauty of scenery, scarcely to be surpassed. The shady lanes, lined on each side with bright yellow blossoms of gorse, brilliant scarlet geraniums, and the deeper tints of the fuchsia mixing with the blue-green foliage and orange-coloured blossoms of the buddleia, and the pale-green leaves of the young oak trees, are very charming, and not less so when these suddenly give place to a rich meadow or sunny hayfield. The intricate nature of the roads, winding in and out of numerous valleys and ravines, sometimes making it necessary to travel more than a mile to reach a spot but a few hundred yards distant, conveys an impression of greater size than that which the place really possesses, and several days, at least, are necessary to obtain even a general idea of the Island.{f}

Below: Suggested Tours Tour History Exploring on your own

Suggested Tours

If you don’t want to explore the island yourself, or if you’d prefer to be guided, numerous tours are available. These are the ones we recommend{5}:

• Aaron’s Adventure Tours, using an off-road vehicle to access areas of the island that normal vehicles can’t reach. Aaron has a good knowledge of island history and some interesting family stories. Tours can be customised to your needs. Email aat@helanta.co.sh or call (+290) 23987 to discuss.

• Robert Peters’ ‘History on Wheels’ Tour. Robert drives you around the island and talks of St Helena history, much of the more recent material from personal experience (at he remembers much of it!) Tours can be customised to your needs{6}.

• The Jamestown walking history tour. Don't miss this - you will learn a lot; not just facts but stories from the lives of past residents.

Note that only the tours listed above are recommended. If you can personally recommend a tour we have not listed please contact us.

There are various other taxi-tours, usually covering the whole island or whatever parts you agree with the driver, operated by most of the island’s taxi drivers. To get the full selection and book onto a tour, contact the Tourist Information Office.

Tour History

Your tour guide may tell you stories that are at variance with the history presented on this website. Do not allow this to disturb you. What you are hearing is the folk-history of St Helena, as passed down through generations and based on half-remembered lessons at school from teachers who themselves learned St Helena history from others. Enjoy this for what it is - just don’t base your St Helena History Doctoral Thesis on it!

Exploring on your own

Read More

Below: World Tourism Day Something to discuss Article: A dot in the Atlantic Article: Sustainable Tourism and a Remote Island 19th Century visits

World Tourism Day

World Tourism Day is celebrated globally and on St Helena every year on 27th September. Learn more about the day on the Wikipedia.

Events on St Helena, organised by the Tourist Information Office, are mostly focussed on showing locals the tourism opportunities the island offers. If 27th September falls at the weekend activities take place on the preceding Friday or the following Monday.

Something to discuss

The following was written by two tourists departing St Helena after a two-week stay. Their views are interesting and should prompt discussion. Saint Helena Island Info does not necessarily agree with the views expressed.

We have spent the last two weeks on your beautiful Island staying at the Mantis Hotel. The experience has been broadly positive but there are areas which could be improved to enhance the tourist experience, perhaps attracting a greater number of tourists in the future.

The following were excellent experiences:

• Aaron Legg’s 4x4 Island Tour was superb. He is an intelligent, well-informed and friendly individual and an asset to the Island

• Craig Yon’s Whale Shark experience

• Anthony Thomas’ Marine Tour

• Plantation House Tour with Debbie plus morning coffee and Tortoise visit

• Coffee Plantation Tour was excellent as is their coffee shop

• Princes Lodge Tour with Reg was also excellent

Less good but still interesting were:

• The Distillery Tour

• Longwood House & Napoleon’s Tomb - Longwood House would benefit from improved curating, the audio tour was too long and turgid in parts. It would also benefit from a coffee shop which could be combined with the gift shop

• Museum has a wealth of treasures but would benefit from better curating

ACCOMMODATION: - MANTIS HOTEL

Excellent rooms with air-con & WiFi. Staff friendly and helpful but on occasion there appeared to be more staff than necessary. The terrace areas would benefit from introducing potted plants/greenery. The provision of free WiFi is a big plus for tourists

AREAS THAT REQUIRE IMPROVING IF TOURISM IS TO BE SUSTAINED:

• AIRPORT - Flights need to be reliable and not cancelled by e.g. fog, thus landing needs to be possible by instrumentation

• Direct flights from Europe would be a huge asset but in the meantime, flights from Namibia would be attractive, allowing dual-centre holidays

• ROADS - Open up the long Haul Road and improve road signage. There is a need for more public lavatories outside Jamestown

• Provision of a comprehensive, up-to-date tourist road map

• Provision of good map for walks (none at Tourist Info)

• Current electricity charges are both primitive[sic] [‘Prohibitive’?] for the locals and also inhibit development

• There is a need for Cafés outside Jamestown

• Tree-labelling in Castle Gardens & the Arboreta

• Tourist Information Office appears over-staffed & tourist info not always available. General appearance could be improved

• Car Hire needs overhauling. Our first car we rejected as it had no rear-view mirror. The second car was driveable but the interior was filthy. The availability of vehicles with air-con would be a plus.

• Develop High Knoll Fort with better signage, possibly a coffee shop and charge for entry. Encourage night viewing of stars with info charts

• Develop and promote the fishing industry. Tourists on an Island such as this expect a plentiful and varied supply of fish to eat

• Jamestown Quay should be a tourist attraction and is instead marred by containers. The prime site - Donny’s, is open only on Fri/Sat evenings

• Support and monitor locals in their development of tourist services e.g. how to run a shop for the tourist trade

Name & email address supplied

Article: A dot in the Atlantic

By Will Appleyard, Oceanographic Magazine, 1st March 2020{10}

The landscape looks arid, mountainous and with a partially grey sky only occasionally revealing green peaks in the distance. The climate feels something like the Caribbean, warm and exceptionally humid although windy. The ocean is a richer blue than I have seen anywhere else in the world. I’ve just landed on St Helena Island, a dot in the south Atlantic and a place that I have fantasised about exploring for several years. It’s a place that I want to capture from every perspective; atop the waves, beneath them, from the air and chasing landscapes.

Local people have come to watch our plane land - it’s a popular pastime here, I later learn. The island’s airport has been in operation for three years and before its completion one would have needed to arrive and depart by sea, a fabulous sounding journey of at least a week. Only pilots trained for an unusual landing approach and unusual local weather conditions are qualified to land here.

Jamestown, which is in the north of the island and my base for a week looks out to the ocean from a deep laceration in the surrounding cliffs and feels to me the warmest part of the island. It can be baking hot here yet cool. Sometimes it rains on the south side but not enough rain to sustain decent agriculture - most of the island’s food is imported monthly.

Currently, Internet connection on the island is received by satellite only and is expensive to use, so with pleasure I leave my mobile phone in my hotel room for the most part.

On the map I can see plenty of wrecks to visit around the island. I’m looking for the Chilean devil ray, Whale Sharks and anything else passing by that falls into the megafauna category. St Helena is a mere mark on the navigational chart I’m studying over coffee; the nearest continent is around 1600 miles away to the east, and to the west? Eventually one would find South America. This is one of the most remote populated island destinations in the world.

Apart from us few visitors from the air, several sailors stop here to resupply. A sailor I meet at the hotel tells me of her recent rough Atlantic crossing from South Africa, and how she’s here to gain internet access before making for Brazil; every visitor I meet has an interesting story to tell. I spend an afternoon sailing around the island with a resident French seafarer who gives me a different perspective of the island from further out to sea, amplifying its remote location.

The weather changes frequently over the island - I feel like I experience three warm seasons in the space of a day. On morning two, as I walk down to catch a boat, the weather shifts from light rain, black cloud then breaking away to bring sun. I am heading out to sea to free-dive with Whale Sharks. These giants patrol a specific spot east of the St Helena’s wharf and it’s thought that they come here to breed. This theory is based on the island’s marine biologists collecting records of an almost equal number of both males and females. It’s believed that this is an aggregation seen seldom anywhere else in the world, if at all to date. Tagging and monitoring programs are in progress here, and the Whale Shark is one of the islands key species, according to Rhys Hobbs, the local marine conservation officer with whom I spend some time with while on St Helena. His team started the Whale Shark research alongside Georgia Aquarium around six years ago.

This is one of the most remote populated island destinations in the world

Sea conditions are rough and windy as we pass the lea of the island and eventually we spot an animal close to the surface; a long and wide grey shadow eventually shows a dorsal fin, breaking the surface like a submarine’s periscope. The skipper puts the engine into neutral and I roll off the boat with my camera. This individual, approximately seven metres long swims toward me for a closer look, which surprises me at first. They have small eyes in comparison to their body mass and I need to continue swimming in order to keep out of its way. Eventually the boat becomes more of an interesting subject for the creature and we part company. The encounter lasts just minutes, but now it is ingrained in my mind.

As well as the shortage of potatoes I hear spoken about quite frequently around the town, there’s also much talk of the fishing issue. Rhys fills me in.

The fish population is generally very healthy. The fisheries are an artisanal small fleet and only fished using one-by-one methods (rod or hand line, no long-lining) with a landing average of tuna of around 300-350 tonne a year, he explains.

The main issue around the fishery is the ability to process the fish once it is landed. The current fish processing plant has been run by the UK government for a long period of time but due to its age and overheads it has failed to break even or return a profit for a number of years.

He adds: Given that St Helena relies heavily on UK aid, the UK and St Helena Governments have decided that it is no longer the best use of public funds to maintain the processing plant and have attempted to invite investment into the industry. Apparently, discussions are still going on.

Underwater, I explore caves that hold most of the smaller marine species. Big eyed soldier fish peek out of the dark from an overhanging shelf yet the brave or fool hardy buttery fish in shoals of perhaps thousands go about their business in the open. My dive guide believes that Chilean devil rays have been seen feeding on the buttery fish here from time to time and Rhys tells me later that the rays are seen here all year round. The geology underwater here is spectacular; stair-like rock formations that look man-made stop abruptly where furrowed black and white sand begins. Grey trigger fish swim back and forth along sheer rock faces. The water clarity is insane.

A couple of days into this island adventure and I’m descending on the wreck of the Bedgellett. The boat was a British salvage vessel in its working life, but now sits 16 metres below the surface, upright on the seabed and repurposed as an artificial reef. From the blue, two grey green shapes grow larger as they approach - I am halfway along the dive boat’s anchor rope when the ballet begins. I learn from local divers that Chilean devil rays seen in groups of three or more tend not to hang around for divers, only briefly gliding past, but at this moment I count two and they begin a perfectly dance, supported by their remora fish companions. Opportunistic trevally fish join the stage during the final moments of this matinee performance before they turn for a final revolution and fly past in formation over the shipwreck and away into the blue.

Stair-like rock formations that looks manmade stop abruptly where furrowed black and white sand begins

Between diving and sailing, I walk the island’s trails. Trails that either finish on high vibrant green peaks covered with endemic and invasive plant species or stop abruptly at cliff edges and pinnacles overlooking the ocean. I take a challenging drive down to Sandy Bay, one of the island’s few beaches, wending my way down skinny, wet and steep roads.

At the beach, black volcanic sand meets with an tumultuous Atlantic ocean, red crumbling cliffs and steep, deep valleys, the wind too stiff to fly the drone. Walking close to the shoreline, I assume the crunching beneath my feet is the result of broken shells on the sand, but I later I discover that they are all pieces of plastic. There is hardly any discarded litter on the island and so I take a guess that this waste has probably arrived from elsewhere in the world, broken down over time by the and deposited ashore. It’s a sad scene, especially in a place where such pristine wilderness meets great biodiversity both in the ocean and on land. Once again, for me this confirms our failure to be able to reduce, reuse and recycle this product responsibly and this scene now greets me at every destination I visit - globally.

The wreck of the Darkdale is broken in two resulting from a German torpedo strike by U-68 in 1941. Until divers drained the ship’s oil tanks to prevent environmental disaster, she continued to slowly leak oil until 2015. It’s said that she still does to a degree. The wreck’s location demonstrates how quickly the seabed drops off into the deep around St Helena. We are only 30 seconds ride away from the wharf by boat and already we’re floating over the wreck that sits on its side in approximately 45 metres of water. We meet the hull at 33 metres down and my guide disappears into the centre of a huge tornado of circling trevally. The shoal races laps around him for several rotations before dispersing to reconvene in the deep.

I leave St Helena on schedule; the plane lands on the island in good weather to take us back to ‘the outside world’ as the islanders call it. Although I have been on the island for just a week, I feel like I need easing back in to the fast pace of society as I know it.

St Helena is special and unlike any other place I’ve visited, although I visualise the pace of life for the island perhaps changing in the near future should they receive the broadband cable so often discussed by its residents. This kind of connection does of course have its benefits, but at the time of writing, I see people sitting and talking to one another in cafés, bars, restaurants and even out on the street. Rarely do I see a person gawping at a mobile phone. There is something deeply magnetic about this tiny piece of south Atlantic rock and I’ve still more of it to explore, both on land and at sea.

There is something deeply magnetic about this tiny piece of South Atlantic rock

Article: Sustainable Tourism and a Remote Island

By James Bainbridge, Round Trip Foundation, 17th February 2019{10}

Following the opening of St Helena Airport, the remote island is looking for ways to boost its economy through sustainable tourism.

The great primeval bulk of the Barn, part of the rocky coastline of this island formed by volcanic eruptions, towers above the crashing waves as the 100-seat aircraft shakily approaches St Helena Airport. It’s quite an entrance to one of the world’s remotest islands, located about a third of the way across the South Atlantic from Southern Africa to Brazil and accessible, since 2017, by weekly Airlink flights from Johannesburg. St Helena is so remote that the flight here takes six hours, as opposed to four hours on the way back, because the plane has to refuel in Windhoek before it crosses Namibia’s Skeleton Coast and the open sea: if the small Embraer aircraft is unable to land at the island’s wind-shear-prone airport, it needs enough reserve fuel to make it back to mainland Africa.

The sheer remoteness of this British Overseas Territory once inspired the Brits to banish Napoleon Bonaparte to the island’s green hinterland, where he died after five years in exile. Around 6000 Boers and a party of troublesome Zulus would also spend several years here, in a history that saw 1000 ships dock annually during the island’s heyday as an English East India Company outpost, before its fortunes declined when trade routes shifted north with the opening of the Suez Canal. Today, tourism is a key plank in the island’s economic development plan for the next decade, but transforming the sector into a healthy and sustainable industry faces challenges.

Firstly, there is the inevitable issue of access. The announcement of weekly flights, following the controversial airport’s construction, was welcomed by Saints, as the 4500 islanders are known. There are also extra flights around Christmas, partly catering to the many Saints, who work in Ascension Island, the Falklands, the UK and beyond; a great leap forward from the five-night ocean crossing from Cape Town, even if Saints wax nostalgic about the RMS St Helena (1990-2018).

That said, the Embraer’s limited capacity is restrictive and, more significantly, so is the cost of flights, coming in at around £800 return from Johannesburg. Considering the wonderful Southern African destinations that can be reached for less from Johannesburg, including well-established tourism destinations from Cape Town to the Okavango Delta, it is unsurprising that planes to St Helena are rarely full. There is also the risk of not being able to land at the island’s windy airport, which could lead to a long wait in the Johannesburg Holiday Inn. A good illustration of these factors was the Fox family whom I met on the plane, six brothers and sisters who had emigrated to South Africa as children and were finally returning, 60 years later. They could no more afford to fly than they could face the sea crossing, and were finally visiting their birthplace thanks to a special on flights.

So how does St Helena build its brand and compete with the stiff tourism competition? Already, many Saints are frustrated that the airport has not provided the hoped-for boost to the island’s economy, which remains reliant on the UK, and tourism businesses receive low footfall. The island does, however, have strong appeal, both to adventurous seekers of a bucket-list, once-in-a-lifetime experience of this remote British outpost and to niche markets. The Napoleon connection is a marketer’s dream, with sights including the French-owned Longwood House, where the Emperor spent his days drinking sweet wine and dictating his memoirs, his tomb (now empty) and his first residence on the island, Briars Pavilion. I met several French tour operators on a recce and one already specialising in St Helena, while St Helena Distillery, the world’s remotest distillery, is making a brandy to mark the 200th anniversary of Napoleon’s death, which is set to attract French pilgrim-tourists in 2021. Producing spiced rum, coffee liqueur, gin from the local juniper and schnapps-like Tungi from the island’s prickly pears, the distillery opened in advance of the airport and benefits from both souvenir hunters and local consumption. (In the bars of maritime Jamestown, the Shipwreck, a mixture of spiced rum and Coke, has long been a Saint favourite, while beer drinkers generally choose between South African and Namibian lagers.)

In terms of niche tourism, the rich marine life and shipwrecks attract locally run boat, snorkel and dive excursions; St Helena is one of the best places to swim with magnificent Whale Sharks, the world’s biggest shark. There is also an 18-hole golf course and resort in the pipeline, but its slated development in the island’s pristine heartland has angered some locals and, as a bleak report on St Helena by British mogul Lord Ashcroft notes, the developer recently changed hands. For me, there was major appeal in the fascinating history of this 120-sq-km island, the quirks of life here and the friendly Saints themselves. In the era of Trump, BREXIT and terrorism, when the number of Brits and Americans emigrating to sleepy New Zealand has doubled, St Helena offers a safe and old-fashioned village atmosphere, where everyone knows each other (literally) and motorists unfailingly wave at passing cars. The mixed-race Saints trace their roots back to the settlers, soldiers and slaves who arrived across the ocean, including British sailors, African slaves, Chinese and Indian workers and Boer prisoners; not unlike South Africa’s ‘coloured’ population, whose mixed genealogy includes the slaves and Islamic dissidents brought from the East Indies by the Dutch East India Company.

Unlike South Africa, St Helena’s is an uncommonly non-racial and colour-blind society, but the comparison between the two carries through to language. Like Afrikaans, a creolisation of Dutch by the ancestors of today’s coloured people, the thickly accented, rapid-fire, slang-peppered English spoken by Saints is the unique legacy of the diverse people brought by the Trade Winds. Somehow managing to simultaneously echo Cornish, Irish, American and Australian lingo, the best description I heard of the Saints dialect was ‘like a cross between Yoda and a pirate’.

With this sociological interest in mind, the historical Magma Way tours run by Basil and Kevin George were fascinating, not just to see the sights but to hear their anecdotes of island life. Showing us Jamestown’s vertiginous 699-step Jacob’s Ladder, built in 1829 to haul up manure and send goods down, 82-year-old Basil demonstrated the technique he developed for sliding down the railings on his way home from school. The many historical sights range from capital-in-a-canyon Jamestown and the imposing 19th-century High Knoll Fort to the Boer Cemetery and the white stones in Ruperts Valley, a memorial to the slaves once buried in unmarked graves.

Culturally, tourism can help Saints to preserve their traditions - a concern for some with young people leaving in search of work while the airport, not to mention the forces of globalisation, brings in outsiders. Given the island’s small population, an influx of even just a few hundred people could have a profound impact; South Africa comes to mind with its high rates of crime and emigration, and one family on my flight was a case in point. Answering this issue was the hands-on cooking experience at Richards Travel Lodge, where Linda Richards taught us how to make island specialities including spicy fishcakes and Plo, a kind of curried paella.

Similarly, conservation of the island’s endemic flora and fauna, which most famously includes the plover, known locally as the Wirebird, has to contend with centuries of alien species. Notable incomers include African succulents, the termites that reduced Jamestown to dust in the 19th century and, most recently, the elusive simian-feline ‘Monk-Cat’, thought to be a civet that hopped off a boat from Namibia. There is now the 32-acre Millennium Forest Project to re-establish rare endemic gumwoods, while my walks with St Helena National Trust guides to Blue Point and Diana’s Peak (823m), the island’s highest point, were scenic highlights. The walks are two of the 21 Post Box Walks that explore this tropical island’s striking mix of barren, semi-desert coastline and pastoral interior, with its lanes winding between emerald hills and along windblown ridges like a chunk of Cornwall that went to sea. With more affordable air access - perhaps provided by competition on the route from Johannesburg and the option of flying straight from Windhoek - and continued marketing of St Helena’s considerable appeal, tourism can build on its positive contribution to St Helena’s economy, culture and conservation.

Based in Cape Town, James Bainbridge is the senior author of the Lonely Planet, Rough Guides and Berlitz guides to South Africa and Cape Town. Magazine and TV assignments have taken him across Africa from the beaches of the Cape Peninsula to the heights of Morocco’s Atlas Mountains, with plenty of stops in parks and reserves along the way. James runs travel writing day courses around South Africa, and works as a journalist, copywriter and copyeditor when he’s not on the road. Visit his website to find out more, and follow him on Instagram @james_bains and Twitter @jamesbains.

19th Century visits

Below: Vists of ‘The Great Sobraon’ Visiting in the 1870s

Vists of ‘The Great Sobraon’

From 1866 onwards ‘The Great Sobraon’, a 19th Clipper, made regular visits to St Helena, on her way home from voyages between England and Australia. The following account comes from The Colonial Clippers, by Basil Lubbock, 1921:

At St Helena the ship made a regular stay of about three days, and this visit was as much looked forward to by the inhabitants of the island as by the passengers. As a rule about 100 tons of cargo, consisting of flour, corn, preserved meat, etc., were landed there and occasionally a few bullocks were taken there from Capetown. Whilst she lay at St Helena, the passengers roamed the Island, climbed the 699 steps to the barracks, visited Longwood and Napoleon’s tomb and generally enjoyed themselves. The Captain also made a habit of giving a fancy dress ball on board before leaving, to which all the elite of the Island were asked.

Visiting in the 1870s

John Melliss, writing in 1875{13}, describes the voyage from the UK to, and arrival at St Helena:

The first week of the voyage is occupied in reaching Madeira, by which time the sea-sick voyagers, about whose sufferings so many accounts have been written, have sufficiently recovered to enjoy the enchanting break afforded by a few hours ashore in that lovely island. The next few days are occupied in steaming down amongst the beautiful islands of the Canarian Archipelago, with, generally, a fair view of the renowned Peak of Tenerife towering high above the clouds. A sight of Cape Verde, on the coast of Africa ; and a day or two, by way of change, of that intolerable damp, steamy, hot atmosphere so inseparably associated with equatorial regions ; and then a week or ten days amongst the fresh South-east Trade Winds, the deep blue seas of the South Atlantic, with bright sunny skies, and St Helena is reached ; the voyager looking back with pleasure to what has been in reality nothing more than an agreeable yachting trip, instead of the much-dreaded long sea voyage.

On landing, the stranger is beset by a whole rabble of dirty boys, each eager to get possession of his order to find him a horse or carriage to visit Napoleon’s tomb, to conduct him to an hotel, or in some way to make something out of him. Horses there are plenty of, and even carriages can be found for a trip to the tomb and back at the moderate charge of two or three pounds.

Our Comment: These days there is no rabble of dirty boys and there are no horses or carriages, but you will find taxi drivers at The Wharf, ready to assist.

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