About St Helena

St Helena Island, in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean, is one of the remotest Islands on Earth.
It is located 1,200 miles from Africa and 1,800 miles from South America.
The 47sq. mile island is the same size as San Francisco, California (USA) yet has just 0.5% of San Francisco’s population.
This means you’re free to explore the island’s natural and built attractions in peace and tranquillity.

For most of its existence, St Helena was only accessible by sea: a five-day voyage from Cape Town, South Africa.

However, since October 2017 the Island has been accessible by air.
Just one commercial service operates to St Helena Airport (HLE), offered each Saturday by Airlink and connecting with Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport (JNB). The journey to the island takes about six hours.
A monthly shuttle flight also operates to and from Ascension Island. Yachts and cruise ships also frequent the island, as it is ideally located between Africa and South America. Peak season for visiting vessels is October to April.

St Helena first surfaced around 12 million years ago, as the tip of a volcanic mountain emerged above sea level. The island was shaped by this ‘older’ volcano as well as a ‘newer’ one, a few million years later. These volcanoes are no longer active. Millions of years of erosion, coupled with millions of years without human habitation created the island’s spectacularly diverse scenery and biodiversity. The island was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, but wasn’t settled until the British arrived to claim it in 1659. St Helena has remained British ever since (except when briefly overtaken by the Dutch in 1665). The East India Company (EIC) was charted for the administration of the island throughout much of St Helena’s history – with EIC remnants publicly accessible today, heavily centred in the capital of Jamestown, a town of preserved EIC buildings.

Until the opening of the Suez Canal (1869), the island was a vital shipping port – this stimulated its economy and made it a place of transience, visited by a great diversity of people and nationalities.
The island’s isolation also historically made it an ideal place of exile.
Among the most notable exiles were King Dinuzulu, 6,000 Boer Prisoners of War, 25 Zulu Leaders, 3 Bahraini nationalists and French Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (who died on the island).

Slaves, ‘liberated Africans’ and Chinese indentured labourers also left significant impacts on the island’s people and heritage, as did the Falklands War, in which many islanders were deployed.

Today, this transient heritage is seen in the true melting-pot mix of St Helenians (known as ‘Saints’).

St Helena’s population is around 4,000. The people of the island, known as ‘Saints’, are renowned for being extremely friendly and welcoming. The small community is extremely close-knit. Everyone knows each other, says hello to one another on the streets, and the driver of each passing car waves to each other on the roads. A melting pot of the peoples and nationalities that have passed through the island over the past 500 years of human history (eg Europeans, Chinese, Portuguese, and Africans), the transient nature of the mid-Atlantic island led to a true cultural melting pot, however, Saints mainly identify as British. Cultural values include a deep connection to nature, a sense of resilience and resourcefulness, strong family and community values, and a great pride in the unique island. St Helena observes a mixture of English and local law; Saints are English-speaking, though often with a strong local dialect; and the St Helena Pound is pegged to the Pound Sterling.

St Helena’s environment is of global significance. More than 500 of the plant and animal species that are found on St Helena Island are not found anywhere else on Earth. This means that the tiny, remote island is home to a massive 1/3 of all of the unique species found within the UK and its territories. Additionally, the island protects the last natural cloud forest on British soil. Plus, the island is surrounded by Category VI Marine Protected Areas nearly the size of France, in which only one-by-one sustainable fishing is permitted.  St Helena’s environment is visually stunning. The amount of microclimates surprises even the most well-travelled. One of the best views are from the top of Diana’s Peak, which sits at the heart of the island at twice the height of the Eiffel Tower above sea level and from which you can see Jurassic-like forest cascade into rolling pastureland that falls away into stark and barren cliff faces, with the sparkling blue Atlantic spreading out to the horizon in every direction.