St Helena
St Helena has what the marketing folks call name recognition, and the reason for that is a more famous name, that of Napoleon Bonaparte. At first, he seems to be everywhere on the island. We are shown the house where he first resided when exiled to this South Atlantic outpost in 1815, The Briars, on our way to his final abode, an elegant villa named Longwood House.(He greatly preferred The Briars, with its drier climate, to Longwood House, situated in the cloud-topped heights of the island’s rugged interior, and spent most of his time at Longwood in a prolonged sulk.) Before leaving the main settlement of Jamestown – which does have an elegant property called Wellington House – some of us stopped by at the Post Office before the tour got underway. Philately is big business for these “Last Pink Bits”, as these British Dependencies have been dubbed by a contemporary travel writer. Should we have been surprised to discover that the latest issue of stamps is of the Napoleons: the Emperor himself; his son by Marie-Louise of Austria who died without issue at the age of twenty; and his nephew Napoleon III. A British Dependency issuing stamps of Napoleon – whatever next? But we are all followers of the market these days: how many souvenirs of the Duke of Wellington are sold at Waterloo? Precious few.
St Helena is experiencing hard times right now and hopes are pinned on a new airport scheduled to open in 2012. With the name recognition that Napoleon’s six-year exile brought on, the island hopes to attract a more regular stream of visitors than can be supplied by the occasional visits of ships like ours. There are practical considerations too: the “Saints”, as the inhabitants of this stunningly beautiful island are known, gained automatic right of entry to the United Kingdom (and hence to the European Union) in 2002. The airport will enable visitors to come in and locals, in search of pastures new, to get out. How that balances out, the future will tell. Meanwhile, we had the luxury of visiting that truly precious commodity in the modern world: an unspoiled tropical island in the sun. For most of us, the visit seemed too short – which is, of course, just as it should be.
St Helena has what the marketing folks call name recognition, and the reason for that is a more famous name, that of Napoleon Bonaparte. At first, he seems to be everywhere on the island. We are shown the house where he first resided when exiled to this South Atlantic outpost in 1815, The Briars, on our way to his final abode, an elegant villa named Longwood House.(He greatly preferred The Briars, with its drier climate, to Longwood House, situated in the cloud-topped heights of the island’s rugged interior, and spent most of his time at Longwood in a prolonged sulk.) Before leaving the main settlement of Jamestown – which does have an elegant property called Wellington House – some of us stopped by at the Post Office before the tour got underway. Philately is big business for these “Last Pink Bits”, as these British Dependencies have been dubbed by a contemporary travel writer. Should we have been surprised to discover that the latest issue of stamps is of the Napoleons: the Emperor himself; his son by Marie-Louise of Austria who died without issue at the age of twenty; and his nephew Napoleon III. A British Dependency issuing stamps of Napoleon – whatever next? But we are all followers of the market these days: how many souvenirs of the Duke of Wellington are sold at Waterloo? Precious few.
St Helena is experiencing hard times right now and hopes are pinned on a new airport scheduled to open in 2012. With the name recognition that Napoleon’s six-year exile brought on, the island hopes to attract a more regular stream of visitors than can be supplied by the occasional visits of ships like ours. There are practical considerations too: the “Saints”, as the inhabitants of this stunningly beautiful island are known, gained automatic right of entry to the United Kingdom (and hence to the European Union) in 2002. The airport will enable visitors to come in and locals, in search of pastures new, to get out. How that balances out, the future will tell. Meanwhile, we had the luxury of visiting that truly precious commodity in the modern world: an unspoiled tropical island in the sun. For most of us, the visit seemed too short – which is, of course, just as it should be.