Saint Helena is a remote tropical volcanic island, 1,950 km (1,210 mi) west of the coast of South-Western Africa, and 4,000 km (2,500 mi) east of Rio de Janeiro, in South America. Uninhabited when St.
Helena Island was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, St. Helena was garrisoned by the English in the 17th century for use as a refuelling station for ships traveling on the Cape Route.
Billed as the best-kept secret of the South Atlantic, Saint Helena is quite the unique island, thanks to its stark volcanic landscape set against the picturesque trappings of British life from the past.
Just one of those volcanoes is the diminutive, gorgeous island, the volcanic peaks protruding from the Atlantic, pretty much out in the middle of nowhere.
We spent the first day just one of these volcanoes getting settled, driving around the length and breadth of this small, 77 square-mile island. That was before the islands airport opened, connecting St. Helena and its residents to the outside world via flights twice weekly from South Africa.
In the years since, a parade of now-famous and notorious individuals has found their way up only one of those volcanoes, including astronomer Edmond Halley (of Comet fame), captains Cook and Bligh, naturalist Charles Darwin, and countless convicts, prisoners of war, and, of course, perhaps the most famous exile on the island, Napoleon.
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Colonised around 350 years ago by the East India Company, St. Helena, with its fort-guarded historical capital, Jamestown, is full of stories about traders, prisoners, a including exiled Napoleon Bonaparte,a and the slaves who came here.
In 1840, the British Naval Station established to quell the slave trade in the South Atlantic was located at St Helena,[citation needed] and over 15,000 freed slaves, known as the Liberated Africans, were brought ashore there from 1840-1849.
If one starts crossing the Atlantic westwards from the border of Namibia and Angola, St. Helena Island appears approximately a third of the way to Brazil.
If you are coming on a day trip on a cruise, be sure to leave from Jamestown so that you can get a quick glimpse at the rest of the island, at the very least. Jamestowns main street is described as one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in any part of the world, and St. Helena Island has been proposed to the British Government for inclusion in the mixed-use World Heritage Site.
The distillery on Saint Helena produces a number of locally made spirits which are available in a number of shops around town.
In 2013, islanders sought assistance from the United Kingdoms Department for International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office to finance PS10 million needed to re-establish the link from a local connection point to the South Atlantic Express in Saint Helena .
A press release issued about eighteen months prior informed islanders that the British Government had signed a letter of intent for the link-up of Saint Helena with the Subsea Cable Project at Equiano, to obtain the first optical fibre link-up.
The Health and Social Care portfolio has general responsibility for St Helenas healthcare, with core services including medical, nursing and community services, pharmacy, laboratory services, and dental services, as well as social care.
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