Saint Helena

Most historical accounts state that the island was sighted on 21 May 1502 by Galician navigator João da Nova sailing in the service of Portugal, and that he named it Santa Helena after Helena of Constantinople. A paper published in 2015 observes that 21 May is probably a Protestant rather than a Catholic or Orthodox feast day, and the date was 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 Protestantism.[5][6][7] 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 Lopes[8] and Sir Thomas Herbert.[9]

Portuguese Viceroy Francisco de Almeida definitively visited the island in 1505, though other Portuguese explorers may have arrived before then, such as João da Nova in 1502 or Estêvão da Gama in 1503.

Another theory holds that the island found by da Nova was actually Tristan da Cunha, 2,430 kilometres (1,510 mi) to the south,[10] and that Saint Helena was discovered by some of the ships attached to the squadron of the Estêvão da Gama expedition on 30 July 1503 (as reported in the account of clerk Thomé Lopes).[11][12][13] Thomé Lopes mapped St Helena's geographic position with reasonable accuracy when he quoted its distance and direction with respect to locations such as Ascension, Cape Verde, São Tomé and the Cape of Good Hope. The island's map location with respect to Ascension and the Cape of Good Hope was likewise described following the 1505 Portuguese expedition led by Francisco de Almeida.[14]

When Linschoten arrived on 12 May 1589 he reported seeing carvings made by visiting seamen on a fig tree that were dated as early as 1510.[15] 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 the 16th-century historian Gaspar Correia, holds that the island was found by the 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 it has been suggested that this event was likely decisive in leading to the utilization of the island as a regular stopover for rest and replenishment for ships en route from India to Europe, from that date until well into the seventeenth century.[16] An analysis has been published of the Portuguese ships arriving at St Helena in the period 1502–1613.[17]

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 has been shown to be based on a misreading of the records.[18] They formed no permanent settlement, but the island was an important rendezvous point and source of food for ships travelling by 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.[19]

Englishman Sir Francis Drake probably located the island on the final leg of his circumnavigation of the world (1577–1580).[20] Further visits by other English explorers followed and, once Saint Helena's location was more widely known, English ships of war began to lie in wait in the area to attack Portuguese India carracks on their way home.

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, destruction of their livestock, and destruction of plantations by Dutch and English sailors.

The Dutch Republic formally claimed Saint Helena in 1633, although there is no evidence that they ever occupied, colonised, or fortified it. By 1651, the Dutch had mainly abandoned the island in favour of their colony at the Cape of Good Hope.

A View of the Town and Island of Saint Helena in the Atlantic Ocean belonging to the British East India Company, engraving, c. 1790

In 1657, Oliver Cromwell granted the English East India Company a charter to govern Saint Helena and, the following year, the company decided to fortify the island and colonise it with planters.[21] The long tradition that the early settlers included many who had lost their home in the 1666 Great Fire of London has been shown to be a myth.[22] The first governor, Captain John Dutton, arrived in 1659, making Saint Helena one of Britain's earliest colonies outside North America and the Caribbean. A fort and houses were built. After the Restoration of the English monarchy in 1660, the East India Company received a royal charter giving it the sole right to fortify and colonise the island. The fort was renamed James Fort and the town Jamestown, in honour of the Duke of York, later King James II of England.

Between January and May 1673, the Dutch East India Company forcibly took the island, before English reinforcements restored English East India Company control. The company experienced difficulty attracting new immigrants, and sentiments of unrest and rebellion arose among the inhabitants. Ecological problems of deforestation, soil erosion, vermin and drought led Governor Isaac Pyke in 1715 to suggest that the population be moved to Mauritius, but this was not acted upon and the company continued to subsidise the community because of the island's strategic location. A census in 1723 recorded 1,110 people, including 610 slaves.

Eighteenth-century governors tried to tackle the island's problems by planting trees, improving fortifications, eliminating corruption, building a hospital, tackling the neglect of crops and livestock, controlling the consumption of alcohol and introducing legal reforms. The island enjoyed a lengthy period of prosperity from about 1770. Captain James Cook visited the island in 1775 on the final leg of his second circumnavigation of the world. St. James' Church was built in Jamestown in 1774, and Plantation House in 1791–1792; the latter has since been the official residence of the Governor.

Edmond Halley visited Saint Helena on leaving the University of Oxford in 1676 and set up an astronomical observatory with a 7.3-metre-long (24 ft) aerial telescope, with the intention of studying stars from the Southern Hemisphere.[23] The site of this telescope is near Saint Mathew's Church in Hutt's Gate in the Longwood district. The 680-metre (2,230 ft) high hill there is named for him and is called Halley's Mount.

Throughout this period, Saint Helena was an important port of call of the East India Company. East Indiamen would stop there on the return leg of their voyages to British India and China. At Saint Helena, ships could replenish supplies of water and provisions and, during wartime, form convoys that would sail under the protection of vessels of the Royal Navy. Captain James Cook's ship HMS Endeavour anchored and resupplied off the coast of Saint Helena in May 1771 on its return from the European discovery of the east coast of Australia and the rediscovery of New Zealand.[24]

The importation of slaves was made illegal in 1792. Governor Robert Patton (1802–1807) recommended that the company import Chinese labour to supplement the rural workforce. The coolie labourers arrived in 1810, and their numbers reached 600 by 1818. Many were allowed to stay, and their descendants became integrated into the population. An 1814 census recorded 3,507 people on the island.

Napoléon à Sainte-Hélène by François-Joseph Sandmann

Longwood House in September 2014

In 1815, the British government selected Saint Helena as the place of detention for Napoleon Bonaparte. He was taken to the island in October 1815. Britain also took the precaution of sending a garrison of soldiers, with an experienced officer (Edward Nicolls), to uninhabited Ascension Island, which lay between St. Helena and Europe.[25]^:87

Napoleon stayed at the Briars pavilion on the grounds of the Balcombe family's home until his permanent residence at Longwood House was completed in December 1815. He died there on 5 May 1821.[26]

After Napoleon's death, the thousands of temporary visitors were withdrawn and the East India Company resumed full control of Saint Helena. Between 1815 and 1830, the EIC made the packet schooner St Helena available to the government of the island, which made multiple trips per year between the island and the Cape, carrying passengers both ways and supplies of wine and provisions back to the island. Napoleon praised Saint Helena's coffee during his exile on the island, and the product enjoyed a brief popularity in Paris in the years after his death.

The importation of slaves to Saint Helena was banned in 1792, but the phased emancipation of over 800 resident slaves did not take place until 1827, which was still some six years before the British parliament passed legislation to ban slavery in the colonies.[27]

Between 1791 and 1833, Saint Helena became the site of a series of experiments in conservation, reforestation, and attempts to boost rainfall artificially.[28] This environmental intervention was closely linked to the conceptualisation of the processes of environmental change and helped establish the roots of environmentalism.[28]

Under the provisions of the 1833 India Act, control of Saint Helena passed from the East India Company to the British Crown, and it became a crown colony.[1] Subsequent administrative cost-cutting triggered a long-term population decline: those who could afford to do so tended to leave the island for better opportunities elsewhere. The latter half of the 19th century saw the advent of steamships not reliant on trade winds, as well as the diversion of Far East trade away from the traditional South Atlantic shipping lanes to a route via the Red Sea (which, prior to the building of the Suez Canal, involved a short overland section). So the number of ships calling at the island fell from 1,100 in 1855 to only 288 in 1889.

In 1840, a British naval station established to suppress the African slave trade was based on the island, and between 1840 and 1849 over 15,000 freed slaves, known as "Liberated Africans", were landed there.

In 1858, the French emperor Napoleon III purchased, in the name of the French government, Longwood House and the lands around it, the last residence of Napoleon I (who died there in 1821). It is still French property, administered by a French representative and under the authority of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

On 11 April 1898 American Joshua Slocum, on his famous and epic solo round-the-world voyage, arrived at Jamestown. He departed on 20 April 1898 for the final leg of his circumnavigation, having been extended hospitality by the governor, His Excellency Sir R A Standale. He presented two lectures on his voyage and was invited to Longwood by the French Consular agent.

In 1900 and 1901, over 6,000 Boer prisoners were held on the island, notably Piet Cronjé and his wife after their defeat at Battle of Paardeberg.[29] The resulting population reached an all-time high of 9,850 in 1901.

A local industry manufacturing fibre from New Zealand flax was successfully re-established in 1907 and generated considerable income during the First World War. Ascension Island was made a dependency of Saint Helena in 1922, and Tristan da Cunha followed in 1938. During the Second World War, the United States built Wideawake airport on Ascension in 1942, but no military use was made of Saint Helena except maintenance of its defences.[30]

During this period, the island enjoyed increased revenues from the sale of flax, with prices peaking in 1951. However, the industry declined because of transport costs and competition from synthetic fibres. The decision by the British Post Office to use synthetic fibres for its mailbags was a further blow, contributing to the closure of the island's flax mills in 1965.

From 1958, the Union Castle shipping line gradually reduced its service calls to the island. Curnow Shipping, based in Avonmouth, replaced the Union-Castle Line mailship service in 1977, using the RMS (Royal Mail Ship) St Helena which was introduced in 1989.

Saint Helena seen from space (photo is oriented with northwest towards the top)

The British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified Saint Helena and the other Crown colonies as British Dependent Territories. The islanders lost their right of abode in Britain. For the next 20 years, many could find only low-paid work with the island government, and the only available employment outside Saint Helena was on the Falkland Islands and Ascension Island. The Development and Economic Planning Department (which still operates) was formed in 1988 to contribute to raising the living standards of the people of Saint Helena.

In 1989, Prince Andrew launched the replacement RMS St Helena to serve the island; the vessel was specially built for the Cardiff–Cape Town route and featured a mixed cargo/passenger layout.

The Saint Helena Constitution took effect in 1989 and provided that the island would be governed by a Governor, Commander-in-Chief, and an elected executive and legislative council. In 2002, the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 granted full British citizenship to the islanders, and renamed the dependent territories (including Saint Helena) the British Overseas Territories. In 2009, Saint Helena and its two territories received equal status under a new constitution, and the British Overseas Territory was renamed Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.

The climate of Saint Helena is tropical, marine and mild, tempered by the Benguela Current and trade winds that blow almost continuously.[34][35] The climate varies noticeably across the island. Temperatures in Jamestown, on the north leeward shore, are in the range 21–28 °C (70–82 °F) in the summer (January to April) and 17–24 °C (63–75 °F) during the remainder of the year. The temperatures in the central areas are, on average, 5–6 °C (9.0–10.8 °F) lower.[35] Jamestown also has a very low annual rainfall, while 750–1,000 mm (30–39 in) falls per year on the higher ground and the south coast, where it is also noticeably cloudier.[36] There are weather recording stations in the Longwood and Blue Hill districts.

Jamestown, from above

Jamestown, the capital of Saint Helena

Saint Helena was first settled by the English in 1659. As of January 2018, the island had a population of 4,897 inhabitants,[42] mainly descended from people from Britain – settlers ("planters") and soldiers – and slaves who were brought there from the beginning of settlement – initially from Africa (the Cape Verde Islands, Gold Coast and west coast of Africa are mentioned in early records), then India and Madagascar. The importation of slaves was made illegal in 1792, thus preventing any further increase in their numbers.

In 1840, Saint Helena became a provisioning station for the British West Africa Squadron,[34] preventing the transportation of slaves to Brazil (mainly), and many thousands of slaves were freed on the island. These were all African, and about 500 stayed while the rest were sent on to the West Indies and Cape Town, and eventually to Sierra Leone.

Imported Chinese labourers arrived in 1810, reaching a peak of 618 in 1818, after which numbers were reduced. Only a few older men remained after the British Crown took over the government of the island from the East India Company in 1834. The majority were sent back to China, although records in the Cape suggest that they never got any farther than Cape Town. There were also a few Indian lascars who worked under the harbour master.

The citizens of Saint Helena hold British Overseas Territories citizenship. On 21 May 2002, full British citizenship was restored by the British Overseas Territories Act 2002.[43] See also British nationality law.

During periods of unemployment, there has been a long pattern of emigration from the island since the post-Napoleonic period. The majority of "Saints" emigrated to Britain, South Africa and in the early years, Australia. The population had been steadily declining since the late 1980s and dropped from 5,157 at the 1998 census to 4,257 in 2008.[40] However, as of the 2016 census, the population has risen to 4,534.[2] In the past emigration was characterised by young unaccompanied persons leaving to work on long-term contracts on Ascension and the Falkland Islands, but since "Saints" were re-awarded British citizenship in 2002, emigration to Britain by a wider range of wage-earners has accelerated due to the prospect of higher wages and better progression prospects. By 2018 Swindon, Wiltshire, had a concentration of people originating from Saint Helena, and therefore it got the nickname "Swindolena".[44]

Most residents are Anglican and are members of the Diocese of St Helena, which has its own bishop and includes Ascension Island. The 150th anniversary of the diocese was celebrated in June 2009.

Other Christian denominations on the island include the Roman Catholic (since 1852), the Salvation Army (since 1884), Baptist (since 1845)[45] and, in more recent times, the Seventh-day Adventist (since 1949), the New Apostolic Church, and Jehovah's Witnesses (of which one in 35 residents is a member, the highest ratio of any country).[46]

The Roman Catholics are pastorally served by the Mission sui iuris of Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha, whose office of ecclesiastical superior is vested in the Apostolic Prefecture of the Falkland Islands.

In 2014, there were reports of child abuse in Saint Helena. Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) was accused of lying to the United Nations about child abuse in Saint Helena to cover up allegations, including cases of a police officer having raped a four-year-old girl and of a police officer having mutilated a two-year-old.[52][53][54]

Sasha Wass QC and her team arrived on St. Helena on 17 March 2015 to commence the Inquiry and departed on 1 April 2015.[55] Announcements were made in local newspapers in week-ending 13 March 2015.

A government report was published on 10 December 2015. It found that the accusations were grossly exaggerated, and the lurid headlines in the Daily Mail had come from information from two social workers, whom the report described as incompetent.[56][57][58]

In 2017, a St Helenian made an application to the Registrar to get married to his same-sex partner on St Helena. The laws at the time had referred to marriages between men and women and it was not clear whether same-sex marriages were lawful. After consultation events, endorsement by the Social and Community Development Committee and Executive Council, the Marriage Ordinance was updated and agreed by Legislative Council in December 2017. Registrar Karen Yon oversaw the first same sex wedding between the original 2017 applicants, Saint Helenian Lemarc Thomas and Swedish national Michael Wernstedt in a ceremony at Plantation House on December 31 2018.

Between 2009 and 2017 St Helena’s HDI increased from 0.714 to 0.756; this places St Helena in the ‘high’ category of human development, according to the classification used by the United Nations. Compared to other countries around the globe, St Helena’s HDI ranking rose from 93rd (out of 190 countries ranked) to 83rd in the world – an improvement of ten places.[68]

The average (median) annual wage on St Helena in 2018/19 was an estimated £8,410. The median male wage was higher than the median female wage. The gap between the two grew in 2013/14, but narrowed in 2017/18 as male wages fell on average and the median female wage level grew. This is probably due to the completion of the construction of the Airport, since workers employed on the Project were predominantly male and many of them either left St Helena or found alternative employment during 2016/17 and 2017/18. Nonetheless, both female and male median wage levels fell sharply in 2018/19.[69]

The overall Retail Price Index is measured quarterly on St Helena by the SHG Statistics Office. The RPI was measured at 105.9 in the first quarter of 2020. This is unchanged from the rate of the fourth quarter of 2019, and an increase from 104.1 in the first quarter of 2019. This means that retail prices rose, on average, by 1.7% over the past year, between the first quarter of 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. As most of the goods available in retail outlets on St Helena are imported from either South Africa or the United Kingdom, St Helena’s prices are heavily influenced by price inflation in those two countries, the value of the St Helena pound compared to the South African Rand, the cost of freight, and import taxes. In the UK, the annual price inflation rate (using the Consumer Price Index) was 1.7% for February 2020, down from 1.8% in January 2020. In South Africa, the Consumer Price Index was 4.6% for February, up from 4.5% in January 2020. In addition, since early 2019 the value of the South African Rand has steadily weakened, from around 17 Rand per pound to around 20 at the end of March 2020; this has a counter effect to the South African inflation, and in some cases may even have made South African goods cheaper to buy. This will mitigate against some pressures which might cause prices to rise, such as increasing freight prices on the MV Helena.[70]

Between January 2010 and March 2016, just before the first 40 people arrived by air in April 2016, the average number of arrivals per month by sea (excluding day visitors arriving on cruise ships) was 307, with an average of 245 arriving on the Royal Mail Ship (RMS) St Helena. Between October 2017, when the first scheduled air service began, and September 2019, an average of 432 passengers arrived per month, with 314 of those passengers arriving by air. Since October 2017, a total of 3,337 people have arrived by air in the first 12-month period and 4,188 in the second. The increase in the second year follows the introduction of a mid-week flight during the peak period of December 2018 to April 2019. Arrivals by air were higher in the second year in every month apart from May and June.[71]

1673-1973 tercentenary 25 pence copper-nickel coin of St. Helena.

In 1821, Saul Solomon (the uncle of Saul Solomon) issued 70,560 copper tokens worth a halfpenny each Payable at St Helena by Solomon, Dickson and Taylor – presumably London partners – that circulated alongside the East India Company's local coinage until the Crown took over the island in 1836. The coin remains readily available to collectors.

Saint Helena has its own currency, the Saint Helena pound, which is at parity with the pound sterling. The government of Saint Helena produces its own coinage and banknotes. The Bank of St. Helena was established on Saint Helena and Ascension Island in 2004. It has branches in Jamestown on Saint Helena, and Georgetown, Ascension Island and it took over the business of the St. Helena government savings bank and Ascension Island Savings Bank.[72]

For more information on currency in the wider region, see pound sterling in the South Atlantic and the Antarctic.

Before the completion of the airport, the primary tourist groups were dedicated hikers and retirees, as the required ship voyage on the RMS St Helena would consume about two weeks roundtrip, making it unattractive to average tourists with regular jobs; the hikers were willing to use about two weeks of leave to get to/from St Helena and the retirees would not be concerned with voyage times. After the completion of the airport, the island has the potential to attract a broader range of tourists.[73]

St Helena Tourism updated their Tourism Marketing Strategy in 2018. This outlined the targeted markets, St Helena's Strengths Weaknesses Opportunity and Threats. It also outlined the unique selling points of the Island including Nature (Whale Sharks and Wirebirds), Saint Culture (Safer Environment), Walking and Hiking, Diving, Arts and Crafts, Twin Destination with South Africa, Photography, Running, History and Heritage (Napoleon), Stargazing, Running, Arts and Crafts, and Food & Drink.[74]

Up until the COVID-19 global pandemic, St Helena has been on track to meet its tourism targets of 12% growth a year, which is required to achieve over 29,000 leisure visitors by the 25th year of the service operating. [75]

Most arrivals to St Helena are non-Saint tourists, followed by returning Saints (visiting friends and relatives), followed by returning residents and then business arrivals. Non-Saint tourists tend to stay for a week, whilst Saints visiting friends and relatives tend to stay for about a month. Around 37% of tourists are British, 21% South African, 13% European other than British, German or French and 9% American or from the Caribbean. Most non-Saint tourists are over 40 years of age, with around 40% being 40-59 and around 40% being 60+. In 2018 tourism contributed approximately £4-£5m to the economy, and in 2019 this increased to around £5m-£6m.[76]

A freight ship, M/V Helena, handles all freight to the island (some express mail is transported by air). It sails from Cape Town to Saint Helena and Ascension Island, from the beginning of 2018. It uses a wharf at Ruperts Bay which was built to assist the airport construction. It can take a few passengers.[78]

Until 2017, the Royal Mail Ship RMS St Helena ran between Saint Helena and Cape Town on a five-day voyage, then the only scheduled connection to the island. She berthed offshore in James Bay, Saint Helena, approximately 30 times per year, and passengers and freight were transferred by small boats ashore.[79] AW Ship Management had a package deal where passengers could travel in one direction on the RMS and in the other by taking British Royal Air Force flights to or from RAF Ascension Island and RAF Brize Norton in Brize Norton, England.[80][81]

St Helena receives around 600 yachting visitors a year. During 2020, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, it was advised that yachting passengers should not leave port to travel to St Helena, however those seeking entry on humanitarian grounds can be granted entry after a 2 week quarantine in Port in James Bay.[82]

Saint Helena Airport in 2016

In March 2005, the British government announced plans to construct the Saint Helena Airport.[83] On 22 July 2010, the British government agreed to help pay for the new airport.[84] In November 2011, a deal was signed between the British government and South African civil engineering company Basil Read, and the airport was scheduled to open in February 2016 with flights to and from South Africa and the UK.[85] The cost was £250 million. This is aimed at helping the island become more self-sufficient, encouraging economic development while reducing dependence on British government aid. It is also expected to kick-start the tourism industry, with up to 30,000 visitors expected annually.[86]

The first aircraft landed at the new airport on 15 September 2015, a South African Beechcraft King Air 200, prior to conducting a series of flights to calibrate the airport's radio navigation equipment.[77][87] The airport's opening was scheduled for May 2016, but it was announced in June 2016 that it had been delayed indefinitely due to high winds and wind shear.[88] In 2017, South African airline Airlink became the preferred bidder to provide weekly air service between the island and Johannesburg. The first commercial flight ever to land at Saint Helena was a charter flight carried out by Airlink of South Africa on Wednesday, 3 May 2017 from Cape Town via Moçâmedes, Angola, using the Avro RJ85 ZS-SSH (msn 2285). The flight picked up passengers of RMS St Helena stranded on the island when St Helena suffered propeller damage.[89]

On 14 October 2017, Airlink began a weekly service between Johannesburg, South Africa, and Saint Helena Airport using an Embraer E190-100IGW, the first scheduled airline service in Saint Helena's history. With 78 passengers aboard, the airliner arrived at Saint Helena Airport after a flight of about six hours from Johannesburg with a refuel stop at Windhoek.[90]

In April 2020, UK charter airline Titan Airways became the first operator to land an Airbus airliner on St Helena, following the arrival of an A318. The narrowbody (G-EUNB) was chartered by the UK government to carry medical staff and 2.5t of “essential medical supplies” for the residents of its overseas territory.[91]

The airport is situated such that at times serious wind shear makes it difficult to land from the north. It is safe to land from the other direction, but it is plagued by tailwinds, which increase landing ground speed, and thus imposes a weight restriction, which translates to fewer passengers.[92] Nevertheless, only a few flights were delayed to next day during the first half-year. This happened a little more often during the second half-year during the local winter. Fog is a bigger problem than wind shear.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and the lockdown in South Africa the commercial air service between South Africa and St Helena was temporarily ceased from 21 March 2020. Private and charter jets shall be accepted only with permission from the Governor. All arriving air passengers are required to quarantine in Bradley's Camp near the airport to reduce the risk of Covid-19 reaching the Island and spreading amongst the population.[93]

A minibus offers a basic service to carry people around Saint Helena, with most services designed to take people into Jamestown for a few hours on weekdays to conduct their business. Car hire is available for visitors. There are also a number of taxi companies available including V2 Taxis and Crowie's Taxis.[94]

Radio Saint Helena started operations on Christmas Day 1967, and provided a local radio service that had a range of about 100 km (62 mi) from the island, and also broadcast internationally on shortwave radio (11092.5 kHz) on one day a year. The station presented news, features, and music in collaboration with its sister newspaper the St Helena Herald. It closed on 25 December 2012 to make way for a new three-channel FM service, also funded by St. Helena Government and run by the South Atlantic Media Services (SAMS), formerly St. Helena Broadcasting (Guarantee) Corporation.[95]

SAMS[96] provides two radio channels to St Helena. SAMS Radio 1 is a music and entertainment channel; SAMS Radio 2 is a relay of the BBC World Service. SAMS also produces a weekly newspaper, The Sentinel, and a weekly TV news broadcast.

Saint FM[97] provided a local radio service for the island which was also available on Internet radio[98] and relayed in Ascension Island. The station was not government-funded. It was launched in January 2005 and closed on 21 December 2012. It broadcast news, features, and music in collaboration with its sister newspaper the St Helena Independent, which continues.

Saint FM Community Radio took over the radio channels vacated by Saint FM and launched on 10 March 2013.[99] The station operates as a limited-by-guarantee company owned by its members,[100] and is registered as a fund-raising association. Membership is open to everyone and grants access to a live audio stream.

Occasional amateur radio operations also occur on the island. The ITU prefix used is ZD7.[101]

St Helena Online[102] is a not-for-profit Internet news service run from the UK by a former print and BBC journalist, working in partnership with Saint FM and the St Helena Independent.

St Helena Local[103] offers a news service and online user forum offering information about St Helena. This website is run from overseas but is open to contribution from anyone who has an interest in St Helena.

Saint Helena Island Info[104] is an online resource featuring the history of St. Helena from its discovery to the present day, plus photographs and information about life on St. Helena today.

Friends of St Helena[105] is a UK-based charity that provides information about St Helena, including its history, culture, environment and current affairs plus practical support to the St Helenian community. In addition to its regular meetings, it publishes magazines focused on the island's current affairs and history and a major online genealogical facility to research St Helenian ancestry.

Saint Helena Government[106] is the official mouthpiece of the island's governing body. It includes news, information for potential visitors and investors, as well as official press releases and pages from the major government departments.

Saint Helena Tourism[107] is a website aimed squarely at the tourist trade with advice on accommodation, transport, food and drink, events and the like. Saint Helena Islands Property Finder – St Helena online accommodation offering self-catering, bed and breakfasts, hotels and property news.

Sure South Atlantic Ltd (Sure) offers television for the island via 17 analogue terrestrial UHF channels, offering a mix of British, US, and South African programming. The channels are from DSTV and include Mnet, SuperSport, and BBC channels. The feed signal from MultiChoice DStv in South Africa is received by a satellite dish at Bryant's Beacon from Intelsat 20 and Intelsat 36 in the K_u band.[108]

SAMS[96] formerly produced a weekly TV news broadcast, Newsbyte, which was also published on YouTube.

Sure provides the telecommunications service in the territory through a digital copper-based telephone network including ADSL broadband service. In August 2011 the first fibre-optic link was installed on the island, which connects the television reception antennas at Bryant's Beacon to the Cable & Wireless plc Technical Centre in the Briars.

A satellite ground station with a 7.6-metre (25 ft) satellite dish installed in 1989[109] at The Briars is the only international connection providing satellite links through Intelsat 707 to Ascension island and the United Kingdom.[110] Since all international telephone and Internet communications are relying on this single satellite link, both Internet and telephone service are subject to Sun outages.

Saint Helena has the international calling code +290, which Tristan da Cunha has shared since 2006. Saint Helena telephone numbers changed from four to five digits on 1 October 2013 by being prefixed with the digit "2", i.e. 2xxxx, with the range 5xxxx being reserved for mobile numbering, and 8xxx being used for Tristan da Cunha numbers (these are still shown as four digits).[111]

Mobile telephony started operating on the island by late 2015.[112]

Sure South Atlantic has an exclusive public telecommunication licence until 31 December 2022. Considering the onset of new fibre capacity to the Island from 2022, and the new licence period, a consultation was undertaken which gathered public expectations of telecommunications and electronic communications post 2022.[113] This is leading to a new Policy on Communications Networks and Services to be developed in 2020.

Saint Helena was granted the use of .sh as its own Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD). This is formally shared with Ascension Island and Tristan da Cunha, British Overseas Territories. Registrations of internationalized domain names are also accepted under this TLD so, for example, the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein uses the .sh domain for some quasi-governmental sites.[114] In practice several sites dedicated to aspects of life on Saint Helena are run from elsewhere in the world, so use other TLD's, such as the Saint Helena Web site[115] which is based in Sweden.

St Helena had a 10/3.6 Mbit/s[110] Internet link via Intelsat 707 (deactivated January 2011) provided by Sure. Serving a population of more than 4,000, this single satellite link is considered inadequate in terms of bandwidth.

As of December 2013 the total Internet bandwidth for the island was 40 Mbit/s download and 14.4 Mbit/s upload respectively.[116]

By September 2014, ADSL broadband service was provided with maximum speeds of up to 1,536 kbit/s downstream and 512 kbit/s upstream offered on contract levels from lite at £16 per month to gold+ at £190 per month.[117] There were a few public wi-fi hotspots in Jamestown in 2010, which were being operated by Sure (formerly Cable & Wireless).[118]

The South Atlantic Express, a 10,000 km (6,214 mi) submarine communications cable connecting Africa to South America, as planned in 2012 by the undersea fibre optic provider eFive, was planned to pass St Helena relatively closely. At the time, there were no plans to land the cable and install a landing station ashore, which could supply St Helena's population with sufficient bandwidth to fully leverage the benefits of today's information society. In January 2012, a group of supporters petitioned the UK government to subsidize the cost of landing the cable at St Helena.[119] On 6 October 2012, eFive agreed to reroute the cable through St Helena after a successful lobbying campaign by A Human Right, a US NGO working on initiatives to ensure all people are connected to the Internet. In 2013, Islanders sought the assistance of the UK Department for International Development and Foreign and Commonwealth Office in funding the £10m required to bridge the connection from a local junction box on the cable to the island. The UK government announced in early 2013 that a review of the island's economy would be required before such funding would be agreed.[120]

In 2017, St Helena Government developed its Digital Strategy, drafted by the Assistant Chief Secretary at the time, Paul McGinnety. The Digital Strategy outlined intentions to connect to a Fibre Optic Cable to achieve developments in Education, Telemedicine and Digital Business.[121]

In 2018, in Brussels SHG UK Representative, Mrs Kedell Worboys MBE, along with Director for Latin America & Caribbean, Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development, Jolita Butkeviciene, signed a Financing Agreement for the Territorial Allocation of the 11th European Development Fund (EDF 11). As a result, €21.5 million was allocated to St Helena to support the delivery of the SHG Digital Strategy through the realisation of the submarine cable to enable faster and more reliable internet connectivity on the Island.[122]

On Christmas Eve in 2019, SHG announced that they had signed a contract with Google to land a branch of the Equiano Cable, named after Olaudah Equiano, an African Author who had been enslaved as a child. The main trunk of the cable will connect South Africa with Portugal. The press release explained that the branch between the main trunk of the Equiano cable and the Island will be 1140km long and that the target is to deliver the cable and associated high-speed Internet to St Helena by early 2022; providing the cable laying, landing station and associated planning permissions and works to start the service proceed on time.[123] The landing of the Fibre Optic Cable will help to develop the satellite ground station and work from home sectors, as was set out in St Helena's 2018 Sustainable Economic Development Plan.[124] The Labour Market Strategy also set out the willingness to attract Digital Nomads to live and work on St Helena.[125]

In February 2018 St Helena Government launched the project to attract operators of satellite ground stations to the island who would lease capacity on the planned submarine cable for backhauling and so contribute to the operational costs of the latter.[126] Satellite ground stations on St Helena could support communications with satellites in low Earth orbit, including those in polar, equatorial and inclined orbit and with high-throughput satellites in medium earth as well as Geostationary orbit.[127]

In 2020, the Policy Statement on Licencing Permanent Earth Stations and Receive Only Earth Stations was endorsed by Executive Council.

The island has two local newspapers, both of which are available on the Internet. The St Helena Independent[128] has been published since November 2005. The Sentinel newspaper was introduced in 2012.[129]

The Education and Employment Directorate, formerly the Saint Helena Education Department, in 2000 had its head office in The Canister in Jamestown.[130] Education is free and compulsory between the ages of five and 16[131] At the beginning of the academic year 2009–10, 230 students were enrolled in primary school and 286 in secondary school.[132] The island has three primary schools for students of age four to 11: Harford, Pilling, and St Paul's.

• St Paul's Primary School in St Paul's,[133] formerly St Paul's Middle School, has both first and middle levels as it was formed by a 1 August 2000 merger.[134] As of 2020 it has 134 students and serves, in addition to St Paul's, Bluehill, Gordons Post, New Ground, Sandy Bay, and Upper Half Tree Hollow.[133] In 2002, in addition to St Paul's it served a portion of Half Tree Hollow as well as the communities of Blue Hill, Guinea Grass, Hunt's Bank, New Ground, Sandy Bay, Thompson's Hill, and Vaughn's.[134]
• Harford Primary School in Longwood, with Governor James Harford as its namesake,[135] opened as a senior school in 1957 and became Hardford Middle School in September 1988.[136] It merged with Longwood First School in 2008. It It also serves Alarm Forest and Levelwood.[135]
• Pilling Primary School is in Jamestown.[137] Occupying a former garrison, the school was established in 1941 and became Pilling Middle School in 1988.[138] Jamestown First School, located next door to Pilling Middle, merged into it in May 2005 as a result of declining enrollment. The merged school initially used both buildings, but as the enrollment continued its decline, the ex-Jamestown First Building, constructed in 1959, was no longer in use after 2007. In addition to Jamestown it serves Alarm Forest, Briars, Lower Half Tree Hollow, Rupert's, and Sea View. As of 2020 it had 126 students.[137]

Prince Andrew School provides secondary education for students aged 11 to 18.

It formerly had separate first schools catering to younger students (ages 3-7 as of 2002):

• Half Tree Hollow First School, originally a primary school, opened as such in 1949 with its current name and year configuration in place since 1988. In addition to Half Tree Hollow it served Cleugh's Plain, New Ground, and Sapper Way.[139]
• Jamestown First School, originally Jamestown Junior School, opened as such in 1959 with its current name and year configuration in place since 1988.[140]
• Longwood First School, originally a primary school, opened in 1949 in a former mess hall for military officers that had been constructed in 1942; this building had an expansion in 1977, and there are four classrooms in a separate building that was built in 1958. Longwood became a "first school" in 1988.[141]

The Education and Employment Directorate also offers programmes for students with special needs, vocational training, adult education, evening classes, and distance learning. The island has a public library (the oldest in the Southern Hemisphere,[142] open since 1813[143]) and a mobile library service which operates weekly in rural areas.[144]

The English national curriculum is adapted for local use.[144] A range of qualifications are offered – from GCSE, A/S and A2, to Level 3 Diplomas and VRQ qualifications:[145]

GCSEs

• Design and Technology
• ICT
• Business Studies

A/S & A2 and Level 3 Diploma

• Business Studies
• English
• English Literature
• Geography
• ICT
• Psychology
• Maths
• Accountancy

VRQ

• Building and Construction
• Automotive Studies

Saint Helena has no tertiary education. Scholarships are offered for students to study abroad.[144] St Helena Community College (SHCC) has some vocational and professional education programmes available.[146]

Historically, the St Helena Turf Club organised the island's first recorded sports events in 1818 with a series of horse races at Deadwood.[147] Saint Helena has sent teams to a number of Commonwealth Games. Saint Helena is a member of the International Island Games Association.[148] The Saint Helena cricket team made its debut in international cricket in Division Three of the African region of the World Cricket League in 2012. The Saint Helena football team first tournament was the 2019 Inter Games Football Tournament after which it was ranked tenth out of ten.

The Governor's Cup is a yacht race between Cape Town and Saint Helena island, held every two years in December and January.

In Jamestown a timed run takes place up Jacob's Ladder every year, with people coming from all over the world to take part.[149]

There are Scouting and Guiding Groups on Saint Helena and Ascension Island. Scouting was established on Saint Helena island in 1912.[150] Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited the Scouts on Saint Helena on the return from their 1937 tour of Africa. The visit is described in Lord Baden-Powell's book, titled African Adventures.[151]

In 2017 Julia Buckley of The Independent wrote that due to the lack of nouveau cuisine, the food is "Pretty retro, at least by London standards."[73] Fish cakes in a St Helena style, with egg binding and chilli; and a risotto with curry dish called pilau or plo, are what Buckley describes as "staple[s]".[73]