Saint Helena

April 19, 2015

One of Great Britain’s most remote territories is the island of Saint Helena.

The system on the ship works like this: everyone who gets onto a launch flips over a token. That way, you can easily see who hasn’t returned.

Jamestown.

It still isn’t easy to get here. A few rare yachts are moored along the sheer cliffs that form the island’s coast.

A couple of times a year, a mail boat comes here from Cape Town; the trip takes five days. They’ve started building an airport on the island, but it still hasn’t opened.

Dock workers.

A special container barge pulling in.

The buildings in the port remain more or less unchanged since the 18th century, it seems.

The license plates are plain, but yellow on the back of the car and white on the front just like in the UK.

The fort’s main gate still works.

St. Helena’s own coffee.

Police.

The prison.

A phone booth.

Trash cans that look like lungs.

A post box.

Colonial architecture with gateways (almost like in Yelets).

The main street of the only town.

There are many wrought iron lattices, fences and balconies here.

“Buy local,” proclaims a poster at the local greengrocer’s. As if you have a choice?

The selection at the general store.

The town is situated in a gully between two slopes.

The slope on the right (if you’re looking from the ocean) is outfitted with a stairway of epic proportions.

The town has two main distinguishing features. The first is the small size of the glass panes in the windows—this was the custom two or three hundred years ago when large panes of glass didn’t exist yet.

The second is how the windows open (half the window frame slides up or down), which leaves everyone’s curtains hanging out into the street when there are drafts.

Locals.

A giant tortoise grazes on the lawn in front of the former governor’s house.

Generally speaking, St. Helena is just a pretty volcanic island that happens to be equidistant from the continents.

But it became famous as the place where Napoleon spent his final years.

The French emperor made a mistake towards the end of his career: he voluntarily boarded a British ship and asked for political asylum. Instead of being touched by this gesture, however, the British sent Napoleon to the remotest hole of a place they owned—the island of St. Helena. It was here, on a fairly picturesque estate, that Napoleon lived out his final years.

Photography is prohibited there for some reason, but the house is very lovely. Napoleon’s tomb is also located here on the island.

The French do have one consolation left to them—the territory of Napoleon’s residence is the property France.