Saint Helena
Saint Helena is a volcanic and tropical island, located in the South Atlantic Ocean, some 1,874 km west of the mainland of the continent of Africa, with the Southern African nations of Angola and Namibia on its southeastern coast being the closest nations geographically. The island is around west of the coast of southwestern Angola, and east of the major seaport city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in South America. It is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory.
Saint Helena measures about and had a population of 4,439 in the 2021 census. It was named after Saint Helena, the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great. It is one of the most remote major islands in the world and was uninhabited until the 16th century, when it was discovered by the Portuguese explorers/traders en route southward around the continent of Africa, then east across the Indian Ocean to the Indian subcontinent of South Asia in 1502. For about the next four centuries, the island was an important stopover for ships between Europe and Asia sailing around the African continent and its southern Cape of Good Hope, before the opening of the shortcut Suez Canal in 1869, in Egypt between the Mediterranean and Red Seas.
The primary method of reaching Saint Helena is by its remote airport. It is also served by cargo ships.
Saint Helena is known for being the site of the second period of exile of Napoleon Bonaparte, from his defeat at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 until his death there six years later.
History
Discovery
According to long-established tradition, the island was sighted on 21 May 1502 by the four ships of the 3rd Portuguese Armada, commanded by João da Nova, a Galician navigator in the service of Portugal, during his return voyage to Lisbon, who named it Santa Helena after Saint Helena of Constantinople. This tradition was reviewed by a 2022 paper which concluded that the Portuguese chronicles published at least fifty years after the sighting are the sole primary source for the discovery. Although contradictory in describing other events, these chronicles almost unanimously claim that João da Nova found Saint Helena sometime in 1502, although none of them gives a precise date.However, there are several reasons to doubt that da Nova made this discovery:
- Given that da Nova returned either on 11 September or on 13 September 1502 it is usually assumed that the Cantino planisphere, completed by the following November, includes his discovery of Ascension Island, yet this map fails to show Saint Helena.
- When a section of the Fourth Armada under the command of Estêvão da Gama sighted and landed at Saint Helena the following year on 30 July 1503, its scrivener Thomé Lopes regarded it as an unknown island, yet named Ascension as one of five reference points for the new island's location. On 12 July 1503, nearly three weeks before reaching Saint Helena, Lopes described how Estêvão da Gama's ships met up with a section of the Fifth Armada led by Afonso de Albuquerque off the Cape of Good Hope. The latter had left Lisbon about six months after João da Nova's return, so Albuquerque and his captains should all have known whether João da Nova had indeed found St Helena. An anonymous Flemish traveler on one of da Gama's ships reported that bread and victuals were running short by the time they reached the Cape, so from da Gama's perspective there was a pressing need that he be told that water and meat could be found at Saint Helena. But nothing seems to have been said about the island, and Lopes regarded the island as unknown. This again implies that da Nova found Ascension but not St Helena.
A 2015 paper notes that 21 May is the feast day of St Helena in the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestant churches, but the Roman Catholic one is in August, and the day and the month were first quoted in 1596 by Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, who was probably mistaken, because the island was discovered several decades before the Reformation and the start of Linschoten's Protestant faith. An alternative discovery date of 3 May is suggested as being historically more credible; it is the Catholic feast day of the finding of the True Cross by Saint Helena in Jerusalem, and cited by Odoardo Duarte Lopes and Sir Thomas Herbert.
When Linschoten arrived at the island on 12 May 1589, he reported seeing carvings made by visiting seamen on a fig tree that were dated as early as 1510. The Portuguese probably planted saplings rather than mature trees, and for these to be sufficiently large by 1510 to carry carvings suggests the plants were shipped to the island and planted there some years earlier, possibly within a few years of discovery.
A third discovery story, told by 16th-century historian Gaspar Correia, holds that the island was found by Portuguese nobleman and warrior Dom Garcia de Noronha, who sighted the island on his way to India in late 1511 or early 1512. His pilots entered the island onto their charts, and this event likely led to the island being used as a regular stopover for rest and replenishment for ships en route from India to Europe, from that date until well into the 17th century. An analysis has been published of the Portuguese ships arriving at Saint Helena in the period 1502–1613.
Exploitation of the island
The Portuguese found the island uninhabited, with an abundance of trees and fresh water. They imported livestock, fruit trees, and vegetables, and built a chapel and one or two houses. The long tradition that João da Nova built a chapel from one of his wrecked carracks has been shown to be based on a misreading of the records. They formed no permanent settlement, but the island was an important rendezvous point and source of food for ships travelling by the Cape Route from Asia to Europe, and frequently sick mariners were left on the island to recover before taking passage on the next ship to call at the island.Visits by British explorers followed and, once Saint Helena's location was more widely known, British privateers began to lie in wait in the area to attack Mughal-laden Portuguese India carracks returning from the East Indies.
In developing their Far East trade, the Dutch also began to frequent the island. The Portuguese and Spanish soon gave up regularly calling at the island, partly because they used ports along the West African coast, but also because of attacks on their shipping, the desecration of their chapel and religious icons, killings of their livestock, and destruction of their plantations by Dutch pirates.
The Dutch Republic formally claimed Saint Helena in 1633, although no evidence indicates they ever occupied it. The Dutch lost interest in the island after establishing their colony at the Cape of Good Hope.
East India Company (1658–1815)
In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the East India Company a charter to govern Saint Helena. The following year, the company decided to fortify the island and settle it with planters. A theory, which had its origins in the early 20th century, that the early settlers included many who had lost their homes in the 1666 Great Fire of London, was shown to be a myth in 1999.The first governor, Captain John Dutton, arrived in 1659, making Saint Helena one of Britain's earliest colonies outside Europe, North America and the Caribbean. A fort and houses were built: Jamestown had been founded, "in the narrow valley between steep cliffs".
After the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy in the kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland in 1660, the EIC received a royal charter, giving it the sole right to fortify and colonise the island. The fort was renamed James Fort and the town was called Jamestown, in honour of the Duke of York, later King James II.
Between January and May 1673, the Dutch East India Company seized the island, but British reinforcements restored EIC control. The island was fortified with about 230 gun turrets.
The British government sent some settlers and gave them land that they could farm, but the company found it hard to attract enough settlers, despite advertisements in London and free tracts of land. By 1670, the population was only 66, including slaves. Also unrest and rebellion occurred among the inhabitants. Ecological problems, such as deforestation, soil erosion, vermin, and drought, led Governor Isaac Pyke to suggest in 1715 that the population be moved to Mauritius, but that was not acted upon. The company continued to subsidise the community because of the island's strategic location. A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 inhabitants, including 610 slaves.
In the peak era, about 1,000 ships per year stopped there, leaving the governor to try to police the numerous visitors and to limit the consumption of arrack, a distilled alcoholic drink made from potatoes. There were two mutinies, perhaps fueled by alcohol. Because Jamestown was "too raucous with its taverns and brothels", St Paul's Cathedral was built outside the town.
Eighteenth-century governors tried to tackle the island's problems by planting trees, improving fortifications, eliminating corruption, building a hospital, tackling the neglect of crops and livestock, controlling the consumption of alcohol, and introducing legal reforms. The island enjoyed a lengthy period of prosperity from about 1770. Captain James Cook visited the island in 1775 on the final leg of his second circumnavigation of the world. St. James' Church was built in Jamestown in 1774, and Plantation House in 1791–92; the latter has since been the official residence of the governor.
Edmond Halley visited Saint Helena on leaving the University of Oxford in 1676, and set up an astronomical observatory with a aerial telescope, intending to study the stars of the Southern Hemisphere. The site of this telescope is near Saint Mathew's Church at Hutt's Gate in the Longwood district. The hill there is called Halley's Mount.
Throughout that period, Saint Helena was an important port of call of the EIC. East Indiamen would stop there on the return leg of their voyages to British India and China. At Saint Helena, ships could replenish supplies of water and provisions and, during wartime, form convoys that would sail under the protection of vessels of the Royal Navy.
James Cook’s ship anchored and resupplied off the coast of Saint Helena in May 1771 on its return from the European discovery of the east coast of Australia and the rediscovery of New Zealand.
The British brought an estimated 25,000 slaves from west Africa to the island, in addition to the 3,000,000 they transported to the New World. The importation of slaves was made illegal in 1792, but the horrific conditions of slavery on St Helena were not abolished until 27 May 1839, when the 'Ordinance For the Abolition of Slavery in the Island of St Helena' was enacted. Rupert's Valley was the embarkation area for slaves; in 2008, when the road to the airport was being built, over 9,000 skeletal remains of slaves were uncovered in a mass burial area. They were reburied en masse in 2022 without ceremony of any kind. Governor Robert Patton recommended that the company import workers from China to supplement the rural workforce. Many were allowed to stay, and their descendants became integrated into the population. In 1810, Chinese labourers began arriving, and by 1818, there were 650 in St Helena. An 1814 census recorded 3,507 people on the island. Many of the labourers were allowed to stay, though the need for their services had reduced by 1836.