Saint Helena

Saint Helena was uninhabited when the Portuguese navigator João da Nova reached it in 1502 and used it as a resupply stop on the route from India. The English East India Company settled and fortified the island from 1659, founding Jamestown, and it became a vital watering and provisioning station for ships on the long haul between Europe and Asia. Enslaved people were brought to work it; the island abolished slavery in 1827, ahead of the wider British Empire. After 1840 the Royal Navy landed tens of thousands of "Liberated Africans" — people freed from intercepted slave ships — at Rupert's Bay, where many died and were buried.

Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled here in 1815 and died at Longwood House in 1821; the island was also used to hold the Zulu king Dinuzulu, Boer prisoners of war, and, later, Bahraini political detainees. It became a Crown colony in 1834.

The opening of the Suez Canal and the shift to steamships took away the passing trade, and Saint Helena declined into poverty and aid dependence. Islanders — the "Saints" — emigrated for work to Ascension, the Falklands, and Britain, and full British citizenship was only restored to them in 2002. A long-debated airport finally opened in 2016, after a well-publicised wind-shear problem delayed commercial flights until 2017, replacing the mail ship RMS St Helena.

The roughly 4,400 "Saints" are of mixed English, African (both enslaved and Liberated African), Chinese, Malagasy, and Indian descent, and speak English with an accent and dialect found nowhere else. The Anglican Church is the largest denomination, and life is small-scale, church- and family-centred, and famously friendly — drivers wave to everyone, and visitors are quickly known.

Flax growing and rope-making were the twentieth-century industry until the market collapsed in the 1960s; fishing and, more recently, the island's rare coffee are the traditional products. Community events — the Festival of Running, cricket, Saint Helena Day, and a strong culture of volunteering — hold the small society together, and the pace is slow, with no traffic lights on the island.

About 4,400 people live on Saint Helena, most within reach of Jamestown, a narrow Georgian town squeezed into a steep valley. The economy is dominated by the public sector, much of it funded by the United Kingdom, with a young tourism industry since the airport, tuna fishing, and the coffee. There is one main road and only a few dozen kilometres of it.

Proper broadband arrived only with a subsea cable connection in the 2020s. Young people still leave for work overseas, and the island continues to rely on British budgetary support. Daily life runs on the weekly plane, the fortnightly cargo ship, and the weather over the highlands.

Saint Helenian cooking is British home food with local touches. "Plo", a spiced pilau, is the island's signature dish; fishcakes, tuna in every form, curry, pumpkin fritters, "coconut fingers", and black pudding are staples, alongside the Sunday roast. A lot of the larder arrives frozen on the cargo ship. Saint Helena coffee — a green-tipped bourbon arabica grown since 1733 — is exported in tiny, expensive quantities, and Tungi, a spirit distilled from prickly pear, is the local drink.

The Napoleonic sites are the headline: Longwood House, where the emperor died, restored and owned by France; the Briars Pavilion, his first lodging; and the empty original tomb in Sane Valley, his body having been returned to Paris in 1840. Jamestown itself has Jacob's Ladder, a straight 699-step stair up the valley wall, the Castle, St James' Church — the oldest Anglican church in the Southern Hemisphere — and the island museum.

Nature is the other draw. Jonathan, a Seychelles giant tortoise resident at Plantation House since 1882 and reckoned the world's oldest known living land animal, grazes the governor's lawn. The central peaks, including Diana's Peak at 823 metres, carry remnant cloud forest and the endemic wirebird, the national bird. Offshore, whale sharks and dolphins appear seasonally, and there is diving on wrecks and reefs. The "Post Box" walks lead to viewpoints and features such as Lot's Wife's Ponds, and the volcanic south coast around Sandy Bay is starkly scenic.