Saint Helena (, ; ) is a volcanic tropical island located in the South Atlantic Ocean, west of Africa. The nearest countries geographically are Angola and Namibia. The island is about west of Angola, east of Brazil and South America, and east of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is one of the three constituent parts of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, a British overseas territory.
Saint Helena measures about with a population of 4,439 in the 2021 census. It was named after Saint Helena (c. AD 246/248–330), the mother of the Roman emperor Constantine I. It is one of the most remote major islands in the world and was uninhabited until the 16th century, when discovered by the Portuguese explorers en route around the continent of Africa 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, before the opening of the shortcut Suez Canal in 1869.
The primary method of reaching Saint Helena is by its 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 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 paperBruce, Ian. 'The Discovery of St Helena'. Wirebird: The Journal of the Friends of St Helena 51 (2022): 26–43. 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.João de Barros, Manoel Severim de Faria, and João Baptista Lavanha, Da Asia de João de Barros e de Diogo de Couto, vol. I, book V, chapter X (Lisbon: Regia Officina Typografica, 1778), 477; Luiz de Figueiredo Falcão, Livro em que se contém toda a fazenda e real patrimonio dos reinos de Portugal, India, e ilhas adjacentes e outras particularidades (Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional, 1859), 138; Damião de Góis, Chronica do serenissimo senhor rei D. Manoel (Lisbon: Na officina de M. Manescal da Costa, 1749), 85; Barros, Faria, and Lavanha, Da Asia de João de Barro, I, book V, chapter X:118; Manuel de Faria e Sousa, Asia Portuguesa, vol. 1 (En La Officina de Henrique Valente de Oliueira, 1666), 50; Melchior Estacio Do Amaral, Tratado das batalhas e sucessos do Galeão Sanctiago com os Olandeses na Ilha de Sancta Elena: e da náo Chagas com os Vngleses antre as Ilhas dos Açores, 1604, 20;
However, there are several reasons to doubt that da Nova made this discovery:
Given that da Nova returned either on 11 SeptemberBarros, Faria, and Lavanha, Da Asia de João de Barro, I, book V, chapter X:477; Góis, Chronica do serenis-simo, 477 or on 13 September 1502Marino Sanuto, I Diarii di Marino Sanuto, ed. Nicolò Barozzi, vol. 4 (Venice: F. Visentini, 1880), 486 it is usually assumed that the Cantino planisphere, completed by the following November,Guglielmo Berchet, Fonti italiane per la storia della scoperta del Nuovo mondo, vol. 1, part III (Rome: Ministero della pubblica istruzione, 1892), 152 includes his discovery of Ascension Island (shown as an archipelago, with one of six islands marked as "ilha achada e chamada Ascenssam"), yet this map fails to show Saint Helena.Duarte Leite, História da colonização portuguesa do Brasil, Chapter IX, O mais antigo mapa do Brasil, ed. Carlos Malheiro Dias, vol. 2 (Porto: Litografia Nacional, 1922), 251, Harold Livermore, 'Santa Helena, A Forgotten Portuguese Discovery, Estudos Em HOmenagem a Louis Antonio de Oliveira Ramos, 2004, 623–31, 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 traveller 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.Jean Philibert Berjeau, trans., Calcoen. A Dutch Narrative of the Second Voyage of Vasco Da Gama to Calicut, Printed at Antwerp circa 1504 (London: Basil Montague Pickering, 1874), 37, 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.
The 2022 paper also reviews cartographic evidence that Saint Helena and Ascension were known to the Spanish in 1500, before either João da Nova or Estêvão da Gama sailed for India. The suggestion that da Nova discovered Tristan da Cunha and named it Saint Helena is discounted.George E. Nunn, The Mappemonde of Juan de La Cosa: A Critical Investigation of Its Date (Jenkintown: George H. Beans library, 1934Edzer Roukema, 'Brazil in the Cantino Map', Imago Mundi 17 (1963): 15.
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.Ian Bruce, 'St Helena Day', Wirebird The Journal of the Friends of St Helena, no. 44 (2015): 32–46. Jan Huyghen van Linschoten, Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen Van Linschoten naer Oost ofte Portugaels Indien, inhoudende een corte beschryvinghe der selver landen ende zee-custen... waer by ghevoecht zijn niet alleen die conterfeytsels van de habyten, drachten ende wesen, so van de Portugesen aldaer residerende als van de ingeboornen Indianen. (C. Claesz, 1596).Jan Huygen van Linschoten, John Huighen Van Linschoten, His Discours of Voyages into Ye Easte [and] West Indies: Divided into Foure Bookes (London: John Wolfe, 1598). 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 LopesDuarte Lopes and Filippo Pigafetta, Relatione del Reame di Congo et delle circonvicine contrade tratta dalli scritti & ragionamenti di Odoardo Lope[S] Portoghese / per Filipo Pigafetta con disegni vari di geografiadi pianti, d'habiti d'animali, & altro. (Rome: BGrassi, 1591). and Sir Thomas Herbert.Thomas Herbert, Some Yeares Travels into Africa et Asia the Great: Especially Describing the Famous Empires of Persia and Industant as Also Divers Other Kingdoms in the Orientall Indies and I'les Adjacent (Jacob Blome & Richard Bishop, 1638), 353.
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 is 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 (EIC) 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.