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May
7:Reefer vessel transfer
May 6: Pirate infested
waters
May 3: Documenting a pirate fishing vessel
Onboard
stories
April
21: Barbecuing on the High Seas
April
19:Beginners guide to nautical terms
April 12: The Garbologist and the art
of garbology
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Greenpeace
activists are on the high seas to stop the illegal plunder of fish stocks
by pirate fishing vessels. See below to get a feeling for life onboard.
Good Friday
21st April: Barbecuing on the High Seas
The mad rush
prior to my departure, and my subsequent burial on board the MV Greenpeace
- under a tangle of spaghetti attached to mics, minidiscs, DAT recorders
and headphones, while trying to decipher technical manuals and various
sound editing and other programmes in preparation for the expedition,
ensured that I hadn't once wondered how we would spend Easter.
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After
only a few days on board, it is all too easy to lose track of the
day of the week and date. So Easter rolled in surreptitiously with
the Atlantic waves. Certainly had I found those few moments to wonder,
possibly the last thing I would have imagined, would have been a Good
Friday barbecue on the poop deck and Easter Saturday exploring the
island where Napoleon spent his final years - the island of St. Helena. |
| My poop
deck barbecue experience was in fact short-lived, as I was on the
8pm to midnight watch. But long enough for Marco's cooking and the
sea air to get the better of me yet again! |
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We have two
cooked meals a day (lunch at midday and dinner at 6pm) and I'm still hungry
- like clockwork 50 minutes before each meal time. Early morning rises
are not my forte, and it's not the 7:30 wake-up call that drags me out
of bed every morning, but the grumbles of a hungry stomach that will not
be denied.
"The
Bronze-ringed Emerald"
Saturday
morning and there is an atmosphere of excitement on board, with everyone
up on deck bright and early, eager to catch their first glimpse of the
island of St. Helena. Perhaps like me, they are imagining what it would
feel like to be Juan da Nova, the Portuguese sailor reputed to be the
first to enter James Bay on 2nd May, 1502, or Napoleon on first sighting
the island on 15th October, 1815. "This is not an agreeable place",
Napoleon is rumored to have said from the decks of HMS Northumberland.
It is true that the island presents a foreboding face to the sea: a profile
of sharp rocks rising from, and cliffs pocked marcked with caves dropping
vertically to the water - no sandy beaches here. Very different to the
pleasant and lush green mountainous interior. This is why St. Helena is
often compared to an emerald in a bronze ring: the coastal region is arid
with little vegetation because of the high saline content in the soil,
while the interior practically glows green.
Where
is St. Helena?
Juan named
St. Helena after the mother of Emperor Constantine the Great, whose holiday
was celebrated on the day he sailed into James Bay. On the day of our
arrival, they were celebrating the Queen's birthday at the governor's
house, also home to Jonathan the 200 year old turtle: St. Helena has the
status of a British Dependent Territory. The island has a total surface
area of 47 miles, being 10 and a half by 6 miles long. She is situated
south of the equator at longitude 5º 43 minutes west and latitude
15º 56 minutes south. The closest land is the island of Ascension,
703 miles to the northwest, while the nearest mainland is the west coast
of Angola - about 1,200 miles away. To the east, the nearest land is the
east coast of Brazil, that's a long swim - about 1,800 miles away - but
female Green Back turtles manage to make the journey (give or take a few
hundred miles), every four years to mate and lay their eggs on the beaches
of Ascension.
Visiting
the "Saints"
Although
of volcanic origin, the last volcanic activity on St. Helena occurred
about 10 million years ago. There is no airport on the island, so the
only way on or off is via the sea. The Royal Mail Ship St. Helena makes
a voyage to England four times a year, and the rest of time ferries back
and forwards from Cape Town, stopping at the island on average every two
weeks with islanders, visitors and supplies. There is also no port as
such, so we did what visiting ships and yachts must, and anchored offshore
in James Bay opposite the island's only town. Jamestown, which nestles
deep in a volcanic valley, is home to around 850 of the island's 5,000
or so inhabitants - or "Saints" as they like to call themselves.
The Saints are a mixture of almost every nation between China, India,
Africa and Europe. After the Portuguese managed to keep St. Helena's existence
a secret for over 80 years, she was first officially taken into possession
by the Dutch, but not settled until the English East India Company arrived
in 1659.
Of
Ship wrecks and Scorpionfish
There are
several wrecks in James Bay, including some Portuguese and Dutch East
Indiamen from the early 17th century. While one party went ashore, Gavin,
Donald, Helene and Lesley went on a diving/swimming expedition of the
SS Papanui which sank in 1911. Gavin our underwater videographer, showed
us the footage of the dive in the evening; apparently the wreck was surprisingly
intact in view of its position so close to the shore. More accustomed
to diving in the colder waters of the North Sea, it was Donald's first
dive in tropical waters and his first encounter with a Scorpionfish. Mistakenly
thinking that Gavin was motioning him near by for an underwater photo
opportunity, he narrowly escaped a nasty brush with this strange looking
and brightly coloured creature: it is covered in poisonous spines. While
a scrape with these would not be fatal, it would certainly not be pleasant
and something best avoided.
St.
Helena today
For those
of us who went ashore, walking under the archway and up Market Street,
Jamestown presented a lively scene, with people and children doing their
Saturday morning shopping, greeting us with cheery hellos - somehow I
had been expecting something altogether more austere and serious. This
bustling activity was, however, short-lived, for, as we were soon to discover,
everything on St. Helena closes at 1pm, after which the streets are deserted.
We were already too late to withdraw money and so had no choice but to
have a drink at the Consulate Hotel, which seemed to be the only place
willing and able to solve our cash flow problem.
Jamestown
today is a rather quaint mixture of old and new. Colleen, our assistant
cook compared it to a Devonshire town. One guide compares St. Helena to
1950s England, (television was first broadcast on the island in 1995).
However, the tentacles of "progress" are long and I have a feeling
that to a certain extent, and perhaps within the boundaries of the "off
the beaten track" shackles, that bind St. Helena's economic development,
she's catching up. Some of the latest (although perhaps I'm out of date,
in which case relatively recent) European hits were blaring cheerily from
a number of bars, including that of the Consulate Hotel. I learnt from
the police officer who came on board the MV Greenpeace, that there is
no shortage of bars on the island and that along with discos (there are
no cinemas), drink is both the main recreation, and biggest problem on
St. Helena. The same guide also lists high unemployment, low salaries
and lack of plans for the future as the ingredients to a social problem.
Apparently an average of 1,000 of the island's inhabitants work on Ascension
or the Falklands to earn enough money to support their families.
Climate
Although
located in the tropics, the island's climate is pleasant, thanks to the
influences of the Southeast trade winds and the cooling Benguela current
from the Antarctic. In the summer, temperatures range from 20-30º
C, although we arrived as the island approached its winter. As some of
our number also discovered, the interior is always considerably cooler
(15º C), for which change, not all of us were prepared. Napoleon,
lived only a few miles inland, in the area known as Longwood which we
visited on our tour of the island, apparently hated the fog which rises
between the hills for about 130 days of the year, making it often impossible
to see the lower parts of the island. We were lucky though and missed
the rain. A rather miserable character from the sound of it, Napoleon
- it seems exile on St. Helena was an appropriate punishment for him:
he died after less than 6 years on the island and before he could move
into the new house they had built for him, since he wasn't satisfied with
Longwood House!
Diana's
Peak National Park
The island
has a national park, which is named after the highest point on the island
- Diana's Peak, at 2,700 feet. Much of the original vegetation had already
been destroyed in the 19th century with the import of plants and animals
and made worse by the cultivation of New Zealand flax, whose fibres were
used to make linen, exported for clothing until the mid 1960s. In 1995,
a project was begun to cut back the flax, in the hope of encouraging the
regeneration of the island's 45 endemic species such as the tree fern
(which can grow upto 20 feet tall), the black cabbage tree, he cabbage
tree, she cabbage tree, whitewood and dogwood. The island is also known
for the rare wirebird, an endangered member of the plover family, which
is the official bird of the island and its mascot. The wirebird appears
on the centre of the arch leading to Jamestown, on either side of it,
two Arum lilies, the official flower of the island.
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