St. Helena tourist information with details about
travel to and around the country. Where to stay and what to see is made easier with
insider tips and hand-selected St. Helena links, by dedicated editors and visitors to
TravelNotes.org - The Online Guide to Travel.
St. Helena, one of the most isolated inhabited islands
in the world, is a British dependency in the South Atlantic. It's capital is Jamestown.
Discovered by Portuguese navigator, Joćo de Nova, in 1502, St.
Helena became a fortress of the English East India Company, in 1659; for vessels on the
newly opened trade routes.
Charles II declared that the island should always be a part of
England, in 1673, and 'that its subjects and their children should be regarded as if they
had been abiding and born within this our realme of England'.
After the Battle of Waterloo, Napoleon was exiled on this volcanic
rock until his death in 1821.
The St. Helena's Coat of Arms has the motto: Loyal and Unshakeable,
and the banknotes still proclaim the authority of the Queen and Parliament of England.
Although the islanders are a fusion of former African and Indian
slaves, Chinese and Malay labourers, Boer prisoners, and homeless Londoners from the Great
Fire of 1966, the St. Helenians feel themselves British and helped the task force along to
the Falklands in 1982.
5,500 Britons live on the isolated island, although they sometimes
feel forgotten by the motherland.
The island can not support itself, so the British Government helps
bail out the British Overseas Territories (Anguilla,
Montserrat, Pitcairn, St Helena, Tristan de Cunha
and The Turks and Caicos Islands) to a tune of
£25 million a year; £13 million of that going to St Helena.
St Helena also receives EU aid to help improve access to the island
and promote economic development.
Until there is an airport on St. Helena, Cape
Town is five days away by sea and Ascension Island is a little under half the
distance.
RMS St Helena:
The RMS calls at St Helena, Ascension Island, Walvis Bay, Cape Town and returns to the UK
twice the year. Packages can be adapted to anywhere from 3-34 days.
You can even see where the RMS St
Helena is right now.
St Helena Airport Project
As St. Helena’s passenger and supply ship, the ‘Royal Mail
Ship St Helena’, will be withdrawn from scheduled service in or around 2010 the
British Government Department for International Development (DFID) will finally establish air access for
St Helena.
The airport, with a 2,250m runway, will be established near the
eastern coast - at Prosperous Bay Plain - and will be capable of supporting long-haul jet
aircraft such as the Airbus A320 and Boeing 737-800.
The airport should be ready to accept flights by 2010 and hopefully it
will help improve the island’s economy.
St. Helena
Institute:
The St. Helena Institute was founded in 1997, to co-ordinate and undertake research into
the Island of St. Helena and its dependencies, Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha.
Books
on St. Helena:
Browse Amazon's best-selling list of books on St. Helena and the Napolean connection.
|
