All at Sea

It has been a couple of relatively quiet days. No complaints from me; the steady and continuous touring around the island, socialising and somewhat muggy nights are taking their toll. As I lay in my (haunted) bedroom the other evening after a very impressive BBQ of rock lobster (aka crayfish), tuna and pork, I could still hear the wind blowing hard outside which didn’t sound good for the following afternoon's sea trip. But as it turned out, boat problems rather than weather put paid to anything maritime for another day. We instead took a drive to Jamestown and then on to 

a nearby local distillery. Yes, there is one here and it is (unsurprisingly) small, yet despite that they make a number of local products. I was given an informal tour before Emma went into the house to see the owner, a friend who is ill, and I walked the dog. 

So it wasn’t until Friday, my last full day, that I eventually clambered onto a boat to enjoy the island's seas. After two weeks here my hopes of seeing a whale shark were pretty low; it is towards the end of the season and on top of that, everything I have heard suggests there are fewer around this year. But when the captain briefed our expectant group, he told us that because we were having to head west instead of east, owing to weather, our chances of seeing whale sharks were reduced from about seventy five to forty percent. If he had been hoping to manage my expectations it hadn't worked.

We saw hundreds of dolphins - some particularly acrobatic. We saw various sea birds. And far off we saw the splash of what we were told was a marlin. But we didn’t see a whale shark. Nevertheless, the sun was hot and the sea was blue and it was just enjoyable being out on the water.

As we nosed past the most westerly headland for a glimpse of the coastline beyond, the wind we had been protected from hit us and the swell increased. It was then time to turn back, closer to the cliff shore to see Brown Noddy nesting sites and small caves and coves among the cliffs. We moored up in a small bay, Easter revellers chilling and barbecuing on the shore two hundred yards off while we jumped into the deep water and snorkelled around rocky outcrops looking for fish. One of the local contractors said she had seen turtles in this bay last time she was here. We found none today. But fish, large and small, colourful and dull, abounded.

We headed the last two miles to Jamestown, drying out in the hot sun and then, five hundred yards from the quay and swimming just beyond the line of the locals' small boats we saw one. I say saw, but unless you are in the water with a whale shark they are nothing more than a dark shadow just below the water. All you actually see is the thin, curved tail-fin trailing behind. But there it was and not for long. It was big but not as big as I had anticipated, a juvenile we were told and as a juvenile more cautious than the adults. So before any of us could think about getting into the water it slid gracefully away. 

Back on shore I had one last water based activity. One hundred yards from the Jamestown quay sits a red buoy and a dark something sticking out alongside it. That something is part of the steering mechanism of a ship called the Papanui and swimming out to see the wreck is a regular Jamestown activity. All I really knew about it was that at its deepest the wreck was in about twenty

feet of water but, swimming out with Emma and the dog, it was the size that surprised me with wreckage strewn along the seabed long before the marker buoy. In my mind I had had a vision of a medium sized pleasure boat but the wreckage that you swim over is actually that of a passenger liner. There is no recognisable complete structure but it is obvious that you are looking at a boat; plates, bits of the ribs, the skeletal remains of the stern and, most obvious, the boat's boilers lying together amid wreckage that must once have been an engine room. Even though nobody died on the boat it was still an eerie feeling looking down at the remains, floating in that border region between a world that I knew and in which I lived and this unknown, unseen world of decaying history lying just beyond my reach.

The Sorry Tale of Invasive Flax and Endemic Flora

As you travel around the island you see flax plants everywhere, their long, thin leaves in clumps covering whole hillsides in many places. The plant was introduced in 1874 to create a flax industry, the fibre being removed in mills on St Helena before being sent off-island for processing into twine, rope and other items. The boom years were from the early 1900s when two World Wars and a conflict in Korea pushed up demand. By 1966 however, synthetic substitutes had cornered the market and the last mill of what had been one of the island's most successful industries closed.

Flax Covered Hillside

The legacy of the industry is a much altered flora across the landscape as the flax spreads across the island, choking out endemic plants. It is a problem that is being addressed slowly: removing flax is easy but in doing so you expose the top soil to erosion and loss. You need to remove the flax and replace it with a relatively well established substitute plant to avoid that issue, simple enough in its own right but requiring more time, effort, money and organisation than simply uprooting the invasive flax. 

Ebony

And man's legacy of biological interference here extends beyond that of simply flax. The introduction of goats soon after the island's discovery was the beginning of the destruction as plants, never evolved to combat herbivorous animals, fell to the goats' appetites. Extensive tree cutting and introduced plants have also taken their toll. Nevertheless, St Helena is still exceptional for the high number of endemic plants that survive. But that survival is precarious for some and the threat is severe; endemic plants have disappeared from over 95% of St Helena due to habitat loss. Some are already extinct such as the St Helena olive (the last one died as recently as 2004). Others, including a member of the daisy family that has evolved into a shrub (the cabbage tree) and the St Helena Ebony (the nation’s National flower) are under threat. There are ongoing efforts to preserve the rich natural heritage but how the island manages its hope to increase tourism while at the same time protecting the rare flora and fauna, all against a backdrop of limited income, remains to be seen. 

Cabbage Tree

Notes From a Small Island (with apologies to Bill Bryson)

This last week has been an interesting exposure to the limitations and joys of small island living. Personally I love the fact that there is still half day Wednesday and Sunday closing here. Some may find it frustrating, but for me it gets you away from that 'everything at the tap of a button', 'available twenty four seven', and 'you don’t need to plan' mentality that has seemingly taken over everywhere else. That relentless availability doesn’t give you freedom, in a way it removes it: without it you are forced to take your life back rather than drift unthinkingly along, worrying only about things as they occur. In a similar vein, the island's dependency on the occasional boat for a lot of its fresh produce was given a positive spin by a local, originally from South Africa. His view: those constraints are a great leveller in the local society - rich or poor, if it isn't there, it isn't there. I guess a little stoicism is an important attribute in small island living.

But when it comes to tourism - and this island needs tourism - there is something lacking. This island is so much more than Napoleon and yet I - and I like to think myself relatively well informed- had no real idea of what else it offered until I did some research after I had decided to come. Is that my failing? Or is that a failing of St Helena's tourist strategy to properly raise the profile of the island?

On island, at a personal level, the people are lovely; I can not fault their helpfulness and friendliness. And yet organisationally there is need for attention. Tourist signs in many locations are often unreadable or out of date (it has been many years since Plantation House has had six tortoises, or five depending which of two adjacent notices you read). The Rupert’s Bay area, cited as 'the most significant remaining physical trace of the slave trade' seems to be on the periphery of their interest. It is mentioned in the museum but other than that there is little in the way of raising the awareness of its existence outside the island, let alone making it a focus. When I was there I had to be pointed in the right direction by a local. The one board I subsequently found indicated the existence of four others that I did not. As for the public bus timetable I got from the tourist office, it is indecipherable; no map, the few routes mostly named by a letter or the company that runs them rather than a start and a destination. The stops - with wonderful names like Ebony View, Alarm Forest, Bottom Woods and Silver Hill - are meaningless to a tourist unless they go onto Google Maps to work it all out for themselves. I didn’t. 

All this may be wonderfully anarchic but it doesn’t aid the outsider. I accept money helps and money is short (although not non-existent) but it is more than that: there is a thin line between rustic charm and 'can’t be arsed' and I think they are on the wrong side of it. I am also reminded of that phrase in the film Field of Dreams: 'build it and they will come'. Yet here, despite the UK government stumping up some 285 million pounds for the airport, the mindset seems to be 'if they come we might build it’. And don’t get me wrong, it is not the average person who I think is responsible here, I can not repeat enough how lovely they are, it is whoever or whatever is meant to pull it all together.

And it is not just me with these thoughts. I have had conversations with other tourists and locals full of ideas, some seemingly obvious, some simple and others - while imaginative and not overly extravagant - probably impracticable for the numbers and the money here. That said those tourists, those locals and I have always also commented on how wonderful St Helena is: its beauty, its people, its history. That should not be forgotten.

Flagstaff Hill

Yesterday we woke up to rain. It didn’t feel like a day for being a tourist, rather a day for relaxing, short walks and chilling. Today we again woke to rain. But today we had a plan. 

Flagstaff is a 700 metre hill to the Northeast of the island. Until the 1700s it used to be a military lookout point but now those great views have made it a common walking destination. It was a wet, windy and misty drive there and a drizzly, windy and misty uphill walk towards the peak. But this area, Deadwood Plain, has a reputation for being windy, hence the siting of the island's electric wind generators here. It was also the site of one of the two Boer prisoner of war camps when those 6000 Boers were brought to St Helena.

Fortunately the sun came out half way along the forty five minute walk to the top. The wind decided to stay with us though, to the peak and back, and then onward to Jamestown for lunch where the talk is turning to whether the aircraft will get in on Saturday. I will try and put that, and the impact on my homeward journey, to the back of my mind and enjoy this afternoon’s BBQ of tuna and crayfish. However, I am hoping that a St Helenean's idea of a crayfish is different to mine having heard Emma saying that we only had one each…

Ferries, Forts and Slaves

I have a week left. Today I finish the last of the land based activities I had in mind to do, leaving the rest of my time here for - hopefully- whale sharks, dolphins and diving, things put off so far because of an unsettled sea state.

A bus into town - following an even more circuitous route than usual for this island - took me to a drizzly Jamestown and coffee in a small, colonial-fronted hotel to await the sun. It was then down to the quay to take a five minute ride on a tiny boat - the locals call it the ferry - around the headland separating Jamestown from Ruperts, the next bay along. Nowadays there is a small, one boat wharf on the waterfront along with a handful of industrial units, while a short walk up the valley takes you to a tiny community. But none of these were why I came.

Ruperts has a tragic history. And it is a history linked to the slave trade. After the Napoleonic Wars the Royal Navy carried out extensive operations to disrupt the transatlantic slave trade and over 26,000 liberated slaves from over four hundred slaver ships were taken to St Helena.  They were brought to Ruperts Valley, a dry, arid and wind blown place, where a receiving depot was set up with a small hospital and quarantine centre. Many received here were in an extremely poor state of health and some 8000 died, to be buried in unmarked graves along the valley; at the time a missionary described the area as 'a valley of dry bones'. After the depot closed in 1860 the graves merged into the local landscape. 

That history was brought to prominence again when work started in Ruperts in 2008 as part of constructing an access road for building the airport. Three hundred and twenty five bodies were excavated in individual and multiple graves, of which only five were in coffins. In addition a large number of separate bones from an unidentifiable number of bodies were also recovered. Grave artefacts gave some indication of the life of these people although the cause of death in most cases was impossible to ascertain since the usual causes from diseases of the period would have left no mark. The remains have since been re-buried. 

Ruperts has been described as 'the most significant physical remaining trace of the transatlantic slave trade on the Earth'. Yet as I wandered along the valley road it was impossible to see the history. I ended up asking a local and was pointed to the church, behind which is a memorial set up by school children. And I now know the old, vegetation encrusted and slightly dilapidated building I passed was a depot infirmary. I did find an information board, but only the one, and it seemed to be part of a series. Yet despite my searches I never found any of the others. It is sad that something so tragic, so important to these islands and so significant a reminder of the slave trade is not better commemorated. 

Ruperts Settlement 

Rather than catch the ferry back I took a path high around the headland giving good views of the sea and Jamestown. It also took me to the crumbling remains of Mundens Battery, a fort on the headland separating the two communities. Originally built in the mid 1600s it was developed and expanded over the centuries and saw most recent use, albeit not in a military guise, as the place where the three Bahrainis exiled to the island for four years from 1957 were accommodated.

After lunch I caught a taxi to a hilltop out of town upon which sits yet another fort. High Knoll is the biggest and most complete of the various forts in St Helena and looms over Jamestown. It was built at the turn of the nineteenth century originally to provide protection against the French and act as a final location of protection for the islanders in the event of invasion.  One or two barely legible signs told a little of the history but it is the scale of the place compared to other military structures on the island and the superb views that made an impact on me. More recently it was used as a place of quarantine for imported chickens, sheep and cattle although now it stands empty, a reminder of the fortress island St Helena once was.

Sandy Bay

I am sitting in small bay of black sand watching the blue and turquoise of the water rolling in, crashing against the cliffs either side, sending spray high up the rocks. The raw energy is obvious and yet it is strangely calming. This is Sandy Bay, a remote place on a remote island, and the bay that Emma and I saw last week from Blue Point.

It was a slow journey to get here. Nowhere on this island is easy to get to, the landscape impedes you at every step. But it does provide for scenic journeys. Today we could have been in Britain in cloud - narrow lanes and familiar vegetation. Only the long, bunched, thin leaves of flax plants on the roadside and covering slopes spoke of another country.

And then we had to descend to the coast. It is a slow descent and a motion sickness nightmare, switchbacks every few yards, sloped and tight, hard to drive down and even harder to drive up, a road built for mules and soldiers on foot rather than cars. Down out of the cloud, then out of the vegetation and finally into a dryer, more barren moonscape of a place as we crossed the rugged landscape I had seen from Blue Point last weekend.

We explored the small bay area and the remains of fortifications, solid walls and rusted canons, here to protect one of the few (mildly) accessible places on the island and telling a story of defence against invaders and against potential rescuers of an exiled Emperor. We walked up into the rugged landscape to see the nests of Boobies, their locations obvious from the large white patches of guano long before you saw their black-ringed heads following you with interest. And then we headed back, a clutch-smoking and slow return up the snaking, single  track road. An afternoon of pizzas at a work colleagues of Nigel's, interesting conversation with people who had moved here taking us through to the evening and a day closer to my return.

St Helena Airport

Plans for an airport at St Helena had been mooted since the 1940s but the island's terrain made the the plan 'feasible but not practical' at the time. It was not until 2005, when the UK government announced plans to build an airport here, that the idea looked like becoming a reality. It opened, to a lot of negative publicity, in 2016.

There are a few myths surrounding the runway: no, it wasn’t built facing the wrong way; and yes, it's direction was adjusted by two or three degrees to avoid a possible site of a rare form of wolf spider. The difficulty is the shear winds created by the nearby cliffs and peaks and these occur at the north end of the runway, the landing end and the end that didn’t move despite the adjustment to alignment. The reality is that there is literally nowhere else on this island where a runway could be built without some massive terraforming project, the likes of which you only find in science fiction novels. Even this site required the filling of a three hundred foot deep ravine to create a flat area big enough to take the runway.

Because of the shear winds the airport falls into a category where two full captains must be in the cockpit, no pilot and junior copilot here. They first fly the aircraft from Johannesburg to a small airport in Namibia where it is fully refuelled before making the five hour hop across the Atlantic to St Helena. Normally, after three failed attempts at landing the pilots return to Africa. The record however is five attempts. When I arrived they landed first time although it was disconcerting looking out of the window to see what appeared to be our aircraft flying directly towards a cliff. My only concern now is that this Saturday the aircraft gets in and I don’t miss my flight home to London.

Prosperous Bay

Prosperous Plain is a dry, high and relatively flat area to the east of St Helena. I was dropped off here this morning to join a group for a walk down to the coast and Prosperous Bay, some three miles away. The environment here means there is little in the way off obvious flora and fauna in this rocky and dusty area, although that said it is supposedly a biodiversity hotspot and contains up to forty species unique to the island. These include the Wire Bird - national bird of St Helena - some unique ferns, a giant earwig and a snail previously only known in the fossil record. I did not knowingly see any of these.

We set off across the gritty and dusty plain to the head of a deep rocky valley, an obvious scar in the landscape. I was grateful for the overcast sky as we descended along its steep side, exposed to the elements, our path an obvious thin, worn line on the valley edge and retreating into the distance. It took us an hour and a half to cover the crumbling and soft ground and to reach the coast.

The Bay itself is a wide and black-stone strewn gap in the largely cliff and crag covered coastline on this side of the island. I sat, back to rock, and listened to the rhythmic and hypnotic sound of waves breaking on the  stony shore followed by the clacking of pebbles drawn back by the undertow. I could have sat there until we left, relaxed and resting, the warmth and the Siren sound of the ocean detracting me from any activity. But I had promised myself a swim before our return and so waded in. I found the water clear, clean and invigorating - refreshing rather than cold. Before I arrived I expected an island in the middle of the Atlantic to be surrounded by freezing cold seas but everything I have heard from people here is about the warmth and clarity of the water and the wonders of the diving and snorkelling.

It was then time for a more measured and slower ascent back the way we had come. I walked with Simon, a Dorset dentist here for three months to provide the island's dental services (a lot of key posts are provided in this manner) and we soon reached the group of huddled cars on the far side of the plain. From there you can clearly see the island's runway under a mile away - being relatively flat this area was the obvious choice for the airport - and by the time everyone else had reached the cars it was nearly time for the Saturday aircraft to arrive. Most decided to wait await its arrival.

The terrain around the airport means the runway can experience severe shear winds making it a difficult landing. It is not unknown for the aircraft to make more than one attempt; the record is five before landing successfully although after three the aircraft is meant to return to Africa (and this has happened too). Hence the fascination by the assembled onlookers. The sound of engines announced the aircraft's arrival. We watched it, tiny from this distance, pitching up and down to adjust its path and heard the changing roar of the engines as it adjusted its descent before floating across the runway, our little crowd willing it down but it seemingly not getting lower. Then a puff of smoke from tyres on concrete before the aircraft was lost behind a hill. But the roar of the engines told us it had touched down too far along the runway.

The second attempt was more successful, handy for me as this was the aircraft bringing Nigel back from a business trip. The fun over, we all said our goodbyes and I was dropped off at Plantation House to await Emma and Nigel and spend an evening celebrating his homecoming.

Napoleon

St Helena is probably best known for being the island to which Napoleon was exiled after Waterloo and, although I now know that this island has so much more to offer, today was to be largely all things Napoleon.

There are three main sites of interest on the island: Briars Pavilion, the room (literally) where he stayed on arrival, just outside Jamestown; Longwood House, a larger residence deeper in the island but which was not ready when he arrived in 1815; and his tomb where he was buried after his death in 1821, six years later.

We first visited the pavilion, a small colonial structure set in the gardens of the house of an English merchant, Williams Balcombe. Although it consisted of one room it seems Napoleon was very happy here; he got on well with the family, particularly the French speaking young daughter who acted as translator. The French Consul, who manages the sites, told us that Briars still stirs up passions amongst some of his countrymen even now: neither supporters nor detractors of Napoleon can conceive of him having been happy here while in exile, although for different reasons, and we were told that the joint tickets for all three sites were ceased because some French simply refused to visit Briars.

Napoleon's Room

Next was Longwood house. This is set deeper in the island; it seems Napoleon’s personable nature was seen as a real risk to maintaining security. Here he was further from the general population and escape would be more difficult. A single story building, it was originally a farm owned by the East India Company then the Deputy Governor's summer residence before being converted for use by Napoleon. He was moved here in December 1815 just under two months after his arrival.

Longwood has small but well appointed rooms that include a dining room and library. It was hardly a prison but its location and build made some parts unbearably hot in summer and draughty in winter. Napoleon was not happy here although he had the freedom to entertain those French supporters who voluntarily joined him in exile and to explore the island, within limitations. The unsuitability of the accommodation was recognised by the British who had always planned for an alternative house to be built nearby. Despite not liking Longwood, Napoleon had said he would refuse to live in the new house (although privately, having seen it being built, he was thought to like it) and his death in 1821 meant he never would. That house was knocked down just after the Second World War, a fate narrowly avoided by Longwood itself.

Finally we visited Napoleon’s tomb. It is in a peaceful and beautiful setting, alone in a small valley in woods, away from roads and buildings and reached by a long descending grassy track. The location was chosen by Napoleon himself: it was a place he enjoyed visiting and close to the spring from where Longwood drew its water. The concrete plinth (his body was removed to Paris in 1840) sits on a small patch of grass, overlooked by trees and banana palms, the blue of morning glory and the red of nasturtiums providing colour even in the southern hemisphere autumn. Unlike the isolated Boer graves, this remote location seemed to give a sense of gravity and importance rather than of separation and a feeling of being out of the way.

The threat of Napoleon escaping was very real, despite the challenges posed by St Helena's remoteness and fortifications. At least two plots were uncovered off island in their early stages and I was also told that Napoleon disappeared for a couple of days, being discovered quite close to the coast, something which clearly raised concerns and led to his freedom to roam the island becoming more limited. The Governor responsible for Napoleon's security, Sir Hudson Lowe, was determined that there would be no repeat of Elba and put quite trivial restrictions upon him. Even Wellington suggested that the security in place was excessive given Napoleon’s situation. Something more like house arrest than exile seems to speak of a paranoia on behalf of Lowe rather than real threat; he even sent the Balcombe family off the island because he thought they were too friendly with Napoleon.

There was one final visit for the day, a small hill known as Halley's Mount. Halley of comet fame was another visitor to these shores in the 1670s, coming here to map the stars of the southern hemisphere. St Helena was a good location, being a safe British protectorate and close enough to the northern hemisphere to allow contiguous mapping. However, like today with the hill enveloped in cloud, the weather often prevented work. So we headed off from the remains of his observatory to join half of Jamestown on the quayside with its Friday night pop up bars, pizza establishments and sunset.