Jamestown, St Helena.
My grandfather had big hands.
Sausage fingers, we used to call them - strong and utterly impervious to oven burns. He would bake cakes for company, thick yellow slices doused in cream and served on a small folding table in his meticulously furnished London flat.
He spoke in a gently sloping accent that was all his own, one I never heard elsewhere.
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A neatly furnished London flat...
On the 21st May 1502, a Portuguese ship came upon a small volcanic island in the middle of the South Atlantic ocean - 47 miles in size, flush with flowing springs, it was a valuable opportunity to restock on fresh water. They christened the island Saint Helena, after the mother of a Roman ruler, and tried their best to keep it secret from the other imperial powers.
They failed. The island was claimed by the Dutch, then the British, then (briefly) the Dutch again. Retaken by the British, it attained notoriety as the colony where Napoleon was sent to die. Since the late 17th century, it has remained solidly under British control, initially as a port of the East India Tea Company, and today as an overseas territory of the British Crown.
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Views of St Helena.
My grandfather often talked about The Ship.
The Ship was the RMS St Helena, a cargo vessel named for the island, which served as its main link to the wider world. The RMS called upon the isle several times a year, bringing with it supplies and personnel, inevitably greeted by an excited, welcoming crowd on the waterfront. The people of St Helena - known colloquially as Saints - often used the Ship to travel overseas for work, chasing employment prospects in the Falklands, in the UK, or on nearby Ascension Island with its bustling American military base.
Ascension is where my grandfather went after he left the island at the age of 17 - there he signed up for the Merchant Navy, embarking on seafaring adventures against the chaotic backdrop of the War (another often mentioned noun). His stories, disclosed in drips and drabs, were awash with colourful details from his early years: visiting ports from New York to London, narrowly avoiding friendly fire, sailing with a monkey, a near miss with a U-Boat out at sea.
He talked about Ascension and his time there often. But it was never what he meant when he spoke of The Island. That definitive article was always saved for humble St Helena.
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Views of St Helena.
Ruled by the British Crown and dependant on funds from the British government, life on St Helena is not as easy as it used to be.
In 2018, the RMS St Helena retired, severing the island’s primary lifeline. Its retirement was prompted by the long-promised completion of an international airport on the island in 2017, a move the British government hoped would revolutionise St Helena. The Saints were promised that the airport would usher in a bold new wave of tourism, as many as 30,000 visitors a year. Many invested heavily in the hospitality sector to prepare for this influx - often taking on great debts to do so.
The tidal wave of tourists never materialised. Contracted out to a South African company, the airport was built on a plateau exposed to sheering winds, making it impossible for large passenger aircraft to land. Instead, the airport is served by small short-range jets run by Airlink, an African domestic airline. To date, only a handful of pilots boast the skills needed to pull off a landing on the island’s little air strip - sitting high atop the sweeping rocks of the memorably-named Prosperous Bay Plain.
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Views of St Helena.
There is nowhere in the world quite like St Helena.
Having been seeded by various colonial sailors, the core of the isle is green with every kind of foliage one can imagine. There aren’t many places in the world where you can walk from a banana grove to a pinery to a eucalyptus forest within the space of five minutes. The island’s central cloud forest is studded with lush, faintly Welsh-looking farmland and vast bushes of waving flax, once one of the island’s staple exports. The edges are a drier, rockier affair - on one side of the isle sits its largest settlement, Jamestown, nestled snugly in a coastal valley. On the opposite side are the barren rocks of Sandy Bay, an area of stark and hilly hikes that would look more at home among the craggy Himalayas than on a tropical isle.
In between, towns and landmarks are christened with evocative, Tolkien-esque names - from Longwood to Half Tree Hollow to Fairy Land, there’s a hint of magic in every signpost. There’s even a public cemetery called The Dungeon, brooding mistily in the middle of the isle.
The people are as diverse as their environment. Over the island’s long history, it has hosted countless ethnic groups - Zulu royalty, French aristocrats, Chinese labourers, Boer prisoners, British soldiers and a large number of freed slaves. My family has often been saddled with the phrase “ethnically ambiguous,” - it doesn’t take long, when reviewing the St Helenan gene pool, to understand the reasons why.
Despite its status as a melting pot, the culture of the isle maintains a distinctly British flavour. The locals are British citizens, and proudly so - a status arbitrarily revoked by the British government in 1981, then restored in 2002. Royal memorabilia is often seen decorating homes, and living rooms are furnished with familiar British trappings, wood cabinets and carpets.
It is a uniquely friendly, welcoming place. With only around 4000 inhabitants, it has the feel of small town - people leave their doors unlocked, everyone knows everyone, and walking down the promenade at Jamestown is a parade of friendly waves of nods, of stops to chat and - if one is lucky - invites to come home for tea and cake, the standard island fare for company. The accent isn’t quite my grandfather’s, thanks to his many years in London, but it’s close enough to have that instant ring of cosiness whenever it is spoken.
The island is a laid-back, relaxing place - rich with spots to hike or lounge that feel a million miles from the stresses of the wider world, safely banished far away across the bright blue sea.
A shame, therefore, that it is also dying out.
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The best part of St Helena - warm welcomes from the people.
My grandfather could make a penny last ten pounds. No matter how his budget was squeezed, he would always find some way to make do without complaint - making substitutions and reductions, cutting out that frivolous butter, omitting an egg here and there.
For most on St Helena, this has become a necessary way of life. The costs of chartering a cargo ship to replace the RMS St Helena, of importing goods from South Africa and Europe, have made the island an expensive place to live. Questionable administrative decisions have added to this, from the faintly comical to the baffling. In the former category are the chickens - an attempt to import more egg-laying birds onto the island created an unwanted surplus, and led to a vast wave of freed chickens being released into the wild. Rather more seriously, there is the case of a £78 million fuel installation lying fallow on the coast - a huge investment that remains unusable for technical reasons variously blamed on contractor failure, the legacy of COVID-19, and the shifting demands of the airport project, depending who one speaks to.
Bureaucracy has taken its toll in other areas, with tight regulations on fishing making it harder and harder for islanders to subsidise their income with the island’s most readily available (and delicious) delicacies. These hurdles have left the island facing as demographic crisis - with more and more young people leaving St Helena, it’s not unusual to find 70- or 80-year-olds resolutely working multiple jobs, struggling to maintain it.
It’s easy to understand the problem. Saint wages are incredibly low, apart from a handful of essential positions staffed from abroad (such as the island governor). The average postal worker receives only £10,000 a year, and must contend with higher grocery prices than in the UK. Healthcare standards are precarious, too, with locals dependant on the services of a surgeon who only visits every three months during the year.
My grandfather was an unstoppable man who never complained. The Saints are justifiably proud of their ability to get by - indefatigable doesn’t even begin to cover it - but even they, faced by compounding challenges, can only stretch so far.
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Views of St Helena.
There is some hope for the island.
I visited for the first time this year, as part of my family’s involvement in a project exploring the legacy of slavery on the island - specifically, a mass grave in Rupert’s Valley, where 8000 freed slaves were unceremoniously buried and forgotten by the British. Though a grim and difficult topic for the island to reckon with, this history has brought newfound academic interest to St Helena, and helped boost its international profile.
And though the airport did not bring the hugely overpromised tsunami of visitors, it has resulted in a steady stream of arrivals - Saints returning home, historians and hikers, expats from the UK and South Africa and adventure tourists from further afield. In the same way the Saints once greeted the RMS St Helena, crowds now gather at the airport to usher in arriving flights, to see who’s come to call. One tour guide I spoke to said his business had only picked up within the last few years, since the airport project. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he told me. “Before, there wasn’t a tunnel.”
Still, the island’s future is far from secure, existing on a precarious edge. Welcoming and willing to chat to a fault, yet tempered by British reserve, there was one common theme that stuck out among all the Saints I spoke with:
Worry for the future of this isle, which was once so prized by empires.
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Views of St Helena.
My grandfather was a proud man who never, ever asked for help.
He died in 2024, before I ever saw his island.
But there are plenty of Saints still left in the world - ready to give visitors a warm welcome to their spectacular home, with its striking views and its treasure trove of little known history.
And for those who arrive with an open mind and a willingness to chat - there will doubtless be plenty of cake to boot.
Travel Tips:
As you might have surmised, I think more people should visit St Helena.
As well as Napoleon’s final resting place, the island is also home to Jonathan, a 193 year old tortoise - the oldest land animal in the world.
The island’s governance remains a curiously colonial affair. The formal Head of Government is still the British-appointed governor, who works alongside the island’s Executive and Legislative councils.
Perhaps because of this, the island can feel like a place out of time - as if an old-fashioned brig might turn up in the harbour at any given moment.
Depending on the season, the surrounding waters are rich with dolphins, humpbacks and whale sharks, and good diving opportunities abound.
For a full range of travel tips, a separate advice page will be coming soon.