19th Century History
During the 18th Century buildings and forts were improved and the historic Main Street of the town was constructed, only to be destroyed, requiring rebuilding in the middle of the 19th Century after white ants from wood used from a captured slave vessel ravaged the town The astronomer Neville Maskelyne came to observe the Transit of Venus in 1761, Captain Cook in 1775, Captain Bligh of the Bounty in 1792, and Saul Solomon, who was to found a business "empire" which still bears his name, arrived on the island at the end of that century
Sir Arthur Wellesley, later to become the Duke of Wellington and to fight Napoleon at Waterloo, stayed here briefly in 1805, and the famous naturalist, William Burchell arrived that year. In an attempt to procure more labour for the island, a request was sent to China for labourers, and from 1810 till 1834, many came here, with the highest number being 618 in 1818. This added to the racial melting pot, and a few older men stayed on after the Crown took over.
In 1815 the British government selected St Helena as the place of detention of Napoleon I of France. He was brought to the island in October 1815 and lodged at Longwood, where he died in May 1821. During this period the island was strongly garrisoned by regular British Regimental troops, local St Helena Regiment troops and naval shipping. Agreement was reached that St Helena would remain in the East India Company's possession, although the British Government would appoint its own Governor for the duration of the captivity, and meet additional costs arising from guarding Napoleon.
Another famous astronomer was to start his career on St. Helena as a young army officer - Manuel Johnson (1828-1833) - later to become Astronomer Royal. He catalogued " 606 principle fixed stars in the Southern Hemisphere". In 1834 it was announced that the island would revert to rule by Britain. The EIC withdrew and all their privileges disappeared. It was a time of great poverty and emigration. The first Principle Medical Officer under the Crown was Dr. James Barry, who became very famous after "he" died when it was discovered that "he" was in fact a woman in disguise. She made sweeping changes to improve the medical services for islanders but was not popular with the male administration! Charles Darwin visited in 1836 on his round the world voyage on the "Beagle"
The next big event of the 19th Century, after the exhumation of Napoleon's body (1840) to be returned to France, was the decision to have a Vice Admiralty Court on St. Helena in 1840, to try those ships which were carrying slaves from Africa mainly to Brazil. The many thousands of captives were set free here and a Liberated African Depot was set up to deal with the huge influx of these sad souls, many of whom died here and are buried in Rupert's Valley.
The astronomer Sabine (with help in succession from Lefroy, Smyth and Clark) was sent here to set up a Magnetic Observatory at Longwood in 1840, this being one of three, the other two sites being Toronto (Canada) and the Cape.[1]
The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 dealt another deathblow to the island's economy, resulting in further emigration. The next set of prisoners to be sent to the island arrived in 1890 - a party of 13 including Chief Dinizulu, bringing some prosperity to the island. A few years later, the first man to circumnavigate the world single handedly, Joshua Slocum, arrived and gave a lecture in the museum in the Public Gardens. A huge change took place
between 1900-1902 when St. Helena encamped around 6000 Boer prisoners, which again boosted the economy[2].
The EIC gave the island a schooner in 1815, to carry passengers and stores. This was the first "St. Helena". Since pirates attacked it in 1830, there was no dedicated ship until 1978. The Union Castle Line, which had served the island for many years, withdrew its service in 1977. The island then had to find its own supply/passenger ship, "the RMS", the third ship to be given the name "St. Helena"[3]. This RMS "St. Helena" served the island well until 1990. It was requisitioned in 1982 by the Ministry of Defence to help in support of the Falklands Conflict, and sailed south with the entire crew volunteering for duty. A new purpose built ship, the 4th "St. Helena", launched by Prince Andrew in 1989 in Aberdeen, replaced it.
Up until the Falklands War, after which St. Helenians were employed there, the island was extremely poor with men going off to Ascension Island (since 1922) and the UK (including the exodus of 100 men in 1949) to find work, the only industry on island since 1907 being the export of flax. This was poorly paid work and eventually this industry closed around 1966 with nothing to replace it. Only around this date did the education system begin to offer a limited number of GCE subjects to a few people, until in 1988 when the Prince Andrew Community High School[4] was opened, offering equal opportunity to all island children to gain subjects to "A" level to enable a small annual number of them ( limited by funding) to take advantage of tertiary education in UK. Many St. Helenians have achieved excellent qualifications since then.
The British Nationality Act 1981 reclassified St Helena and the other Crown Colonies as British Dependent Territories. The islanders lost their status as citizens of the United Kingdom (as defined in the British Nationality Act 1948) and were stripped of their right of abode in Britain. After a lot of invaluable effort by M.P.'s and friends in UK, by the Citizenship Commission on island, by islanders themselves, and lawyers in Canada, for which the islanders will forever be grateful, British citizenship was regained on the 500th Anniversary of the discovery, in 2002.
[1] Other astronomers who visited the island:- John MacDonald (1796), Henry Foster (1828-31), Admiral Duperry (1832), Sir James Clark Ross (1840), Lt. Edmund Palmer (1850-52), Lt. Washington ( 18720) Capt. Oliver (1869),Dr. David Gill (1877), Prof David Todd and Cleveland Abbe (1890) Ref:-Annals of Science, Vol. 31 No.6 489-510:- "Astronomers and other Scientists on St. Helena" by W.G.Tatham and K.A.Harwood
[2] In 1907, 25 Zulu Chiefs were sent here after the Poll Tax rebellion. 7 died here before they left in 1910; 1957 saw the arrival of 3 prisoners from Bahrain and between 1957 and 1961,a pretender to the throne of the Sultan of Zanzibar was also imprisoned here with his entourage.
[3] The second ship with this name was HMS St Helena named in 1944
[4] Prince Andrew began his relationship with St. Helena in 1984, when he visited the island to commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the island as a Crown Colony. He agreed then that the proposed High School could bear his name.
