St. Helena…the island that bills itself as the most remote place on earth. It is, however, a shrine of sorts for philologists. Apparently, first day covers and regular postage stamps are highly sought after by those who enjoy such pastimes. Other than that, St. Helena boasts itself as the last place on earth that Napoleon lived. He was actually buried here for several years after his death, but was dug up and moved to Paris where he lies in state at Les Invalides. His grave and the home, Longwood, in which he lived out his exile are still, however, scrupulously maintained by the St. Helena Historical Society for the benefit of the few hardy tourists who do manage to get here.

St. Helena is a British Protectorate and is lumped in with Ascension Island and Tristan de Cunha. These other two small islands are also flyspecks in the Atlantic. Our next stop is Ascension and it is the only place in the world where there are no natives or permanent residents. More on that later.

Our stay at St. Helena is brief. We land at 8:00 AM and weigh anchor at 3:00 PM. Our proposed tour of the island got cancelled for lack of interest. It seems that we were the only two to sign up. So we took the tender in and just walked around the small town (village?) of Jamestown, the main settlement on the island. There are only about 4000 inhabitants total on St. Helena, of which about 800 live in Jamestown. Our tour of the town was also brief. We spent most of our time in the small, but very well curated, museum. The museum contains exhibits on St. Helena’s history and has many original artifacts going back almost two centuries. In its rather interesting history, St. Helena has served as a way station for sailing vessels, a prison (Boer prisoners from South Africa during the Boer War at the turn of the 20th century), and a staging area for one of the shortest wars on record.

Our first glimpse of St. Helena from our balcony. The main town, Jamestown, is in the cleft at the center and is the commercial center of town. The main residential areas are on the hilltop to the right.

You can see from the maps that St. Helena lies about halfway between Great Britain and the Falkland Islands. That position was of critical importance to the British several decades ago as they sought to quell the Argentinean takeover of the Falklands. Without a supply base at that location, the war might have gone on longer and had a different outcome. Ascension Island played a major role in that effort, but St. Helena was critical since many of the military base work force came over from St. Helena to Ascension since they have an airport and St. Helena does not – yet. Stay tuned for 2017 when they are supposed to get one.

Aside from the occasional visitors from cruise ships and yachts coming from South Africa and other places in Africa and southern Europe, the Saints, as the St. Helenians call themselves, don’t really have much to do except fish, print stamps, and just hang out. Not a bad life…I suppose… here are a few street scenes:

After our short wander through the museum, a stop to peek in the local church, and a short walk up the “Jacob’s Ladder” staircase (699 steps from bottom to top and then back down again 699 steps), we retired back to the ship and some St. Helena-style relaxation. We did make one very important decision: if we ever get back here, we will hire a car and see the rest of the island at leisure.

Jacob's Ladder from Jamestown to Hilltop - 699 steps. It used to be a cableway that was used to haul supplies up and garbage down.

Yep! That's me on Jacob's Ladder. As long as no one asks me if
I walked all the way up and all the way back down, I won't have to lie...

Tomorrow a day at sea and then another short day at Ascension Island.

Well, today's short stop and look around Ascension Island was a washout. Because of the very high swells dockside, the Captain made an executive decision in favor of passengers' safety and canceled the landings. So this becomes another day at sea. We will hang out for a short time and then begin our final cross-Atlantic trek to Devil's Island and the Caribbean.

Since I had gone to the trouble of making up a map of Ascension Island, here it is:

Stay tuned ...