St Helena: The emperor and the enslaved

There is a beautiful garden at the bottom of Jamestown, the largest settlement on the island of St. Helena. That’s not saying much, of course. This diminutive island — cast adrift in the Atlantic, almost midway between Angola and Brazil — really is just a “speck in the sea”. At least, that’s what Joshua Slocum called it when he arrived here in April 1898 on his way to becoming the first person to sail around the world single-handedly.

St. Helena has long attracted adventurous wanderers, and you’ll often find visiting yachties wandering through the Castle Gardens, where fairy terns and red-billed tropicbirds cry and wheel overhead. Those salty sailors are likely on their way to Anne’s Place, where cold beer, fresh fish, and the Saints’ laid-back hospitality help you slide into island life. But on my last visit, I wandered the gardens for a different reason.

There, hidden amid the well-tended flowerbeds, stands a marble monument to the commander and crew of the HMS Waterwitch and the role this tiny island played in ending the trans-Atlantic slave trade. St. Helena is perhaps most famous as the final resting place of Napoleon Bonaparte, the self-proclaimed Emperor of France. The British exiled him here after the Battle of Waterloo, and he died on the island in May 1821. It’s a tale well told in the houses he called home — the Briars Pavilion and Longwood House. A tale that’s less well told is the story of St. Helena and the slave trade.

But that, happily, is starting to change, as the island reckons with a darker chapter in its history. In the mid-1800s the island was home to the Royal Navy’s West Africa Squadron, which patrolled the Atlantic for slave ships sailing to Brazil and the Caribbean. Between 1840 and 1872, upwards of 25 000 enslaved Africans landed on the island. Most sailed onwards to their final destinations — as indentured labourers, not slaves, though that’s little more than semantics — but many died on arrival and were buried in unmarked graves in the area known as Rupert’s Valley.

It was a piece of history largely forgotten until 2008, when the valley was excavated for a road to the new airport. Some 325 human skeletons were exhumed and stored in boxes at the island’s museum. And there they stayed until 2022, when they were reburied with dignity in a memorial site at the top of the valley.

There are also plans to restore the valley’s original slave hospital into an interpretive centre that will tell the story of the liberated Africans who set foot on the island and the thousands who still lie in unmarked graves and burial grounds.

Until then, the small St. Helena Museum at the bottom of Jamestown is the best place to delve into this untold story, with engaging exhibitions and artifacts telling the very human history of St. Helena and the slave trade.

History seems woven into the fabric of this remarkable island. Around almost every corner of Jamestown lies a cannon, once used to fortify the island as a colonial stronghold, while the streets — from Maldivia Lane to China Lane — speak of the migrants who settled here through the centuries.

Another afternoon I head out to Wranghams, where Debbie and Neil Fantom tend their micro-plantation of coffee bushes against the lush slopes of Sandy Bay. The first beans arrived on the island from Yemen in 1732, and today St. Helena’s small plantations and micro-roasters produce some of the world’s most sought-after beans. The Fantoms are a delight, and welcome visitors to their beautifully renovated 18th-century manor house with hand-roasted coffee and traditional island dishes.

I sample a few more plates at Mantis St Helena that evening, where the island’s superb tuna appears as anything from sashimi to traditional fishcakes. On an island known for charming homestays and low-key B&Bs, Mantis St Helena is the smartest address in Jamestown. The best rooms are the five Heritage Suites, set in what was once the officers’ barracks of the East India Company. The hotel is also just steps from the quayside and the heart of the island’s other attractions.

In summer you can snorkel with whale sharks or cast a line into the rich fishing grounds. Join the locals at the weekly yacht-club fish-fry or leap off the quayside into the year-round warm seas. It’s a remarkable island, with a rich history. And with weekly flights jetting in from Joburg (and Cape Town, from this November) it’s never been easier to explore the island of Saints. wranghams.com mantiscollection.com/hotel/st-helena-hotel/

• From the May edition of Wanted, 2024.