St. Helena Travel Guide @ TravelNotes.org

Travel Notes: Africa: St. Helena Travel Notes

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 Country Information

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.

Saint Helena Government.

Getting To St Helena

The Overseas Territory of St Helena is one of the most remote inhabited islands in the world and can currently only be reached by sea.

Until there is an airport on St. Helena, Cape Town is five days away by ship and Ascension Island is a little under half the distance.

RMS St Helena:
The Royal Mail Ship calls at St Helena, Ascension Island, Walvis Bay, Cape Town and returns to the UK (Portland) twice a year. Packages can be adapted to anywhere from 3-34 days.

You can even see where the RMS St Helena is right now.

Sailing Schedules:
You'll probably need to plan well in advance.

St Helena Tourism:
Discover the seven wonders of Saint Helena.

St Helena Yacht Club:
The only yacht club in the South Atlantic Ocean.

St Helena Airport

The planned airport, with a 2,250m runway, which was to be established near the eastern coast - at Prosperous Bay Plain - was put on hold, in December 2008.

St Helena Access Project.

St Helena Community

Saint FM:
Saint Helena's community radio station.

St Helena Independent:
The Independent is available every Friday morning for free download and printing to users outside of St Helena. The web edition will become available every Monday after publication to internet users with a local IP address, originating in St Helena.

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.

St. Helena Travel Guides

Books on St. Helena:
Browse Amazon's best-selling list of books on St. Helena and the Napolean connection.