Jamestown

Jamestown was founded in 1659, when the English East India Company fortified the landing on an island that Portuguese ships had found uninhabited in 1502. The valley offered fresh water and a place for boats to come ashore, and the town was named for James, Duke of York. Its purpose was to water and provision ships on the long haul between Europe and Asia, and at the peak about 1,000 ships a year called here.

The town grew as a fortified funnel: fortifications across the seafront, batteries on the heights, and a single street of Georgian houses, stores, church and Castle running inland. Enslaved people worked the wharf and the plantations, and their emancipation began in 1827. From 1840 the island was a base for the Royal Navy's campaign against the slave trade: by the 1870s an estimated 25,000 Africans had been freed from intercepted ships and landed in neighbouring Rupert's Valley, where about 5,000 died and were buried; their graves were rediscovered in 2006 during preliminary digging for the airport. In 1829 Jacob's Ladder was built up the valley side to carry goods to the garrison on Ladder Hill.

Napoleon arrived in 1815 and spent his first weeks at the Briars above the town before moving inland to Longwood. Later the island held the Zulu king Dinuzulu, in 1890–1897, and in 1900 and 1901 more than 6,000 Boer prisoners of war. The opening of the Suez Canal and the shift to steam took away the passing trade, and Jamestown settled into a long quiet decline, its population drifting overseas for work. The airport opened in 2016, with scheduled flights from 2017, and the mail ship RMS St Helena made her last sailing in 2018.

Jamestown is the meeting point of a community of some 4,400 people who call themselves Saints, descended from English settlers, enslaved and liberated Africans, Chinese labourers and Malagasy and Indian arrivals. English is the only language, spoken with an accent and turns of phrase found nowhere else, and nearly everyone on the island passes through the town's single street in the course of a week.

Life is church- and family-centred. The Anglican Church is the largest denomination, with Catholic, Baptist and Adventist congregations alongside it, and Sunday is quiet. In a small community the same people meet at work, in church and in the island's clubs. Drivers wave to every car they pass, and a stranger who does not greet back is noticed.

The calendar gives the town its rhythm — Saint Helena Day in May, the Festival of Running in the autumn, the arrival of the Governor's Cup yachts in James Bay, cricket and football through the holidays. Flax and rope-making were the twentieth-century industry until the mills closed in 1965. Attitudes are conservative and courteous, and news travels faster than any official announcement.

About 600 people live in Jamestown itself, with the larger residential district of Half Tree Hollow on the plateau directly above, reached by the Ladder Hill road or the 699 steps. The town is the island's only real centre: government offices, the hospital, the bank and the main shops are all within a few hundred metres of each other.

The public sector, much of it funded by the United Kingdom, employs a large share of the workforce; tourism has grown since the airport opened, and fishing, the island's coffee and construction make up much of the rest. Prices are high because nearly everything arrives on the regular cargo ship from Cape Town, and the arrival of the vessel changes what is on the shelves. Proper broadband reached the island in 2023 with the Equiano submarine cable.

Days start early and the town empties in the late afternoon, when people drive back to the villages and the plateau. Young Saints still leave for work in the United Kingdom and on Ascension and the Falklands, an outflow that has left an ageing population and a shortage of skilled workers — the central concern of island politics, alongside the reliability of the flight and the cost of living.

Saint Helenian cooking is British home food shaped by the sea and by a long history of imports. Plo, a spiced pilau of meat and rice, is the dish the island claims as its own and the standard offering at any gathering. Tuna is everywhere — in fishcakes, curried, grilled or cold with salad — because it is landed here and much of the rest of the larder is frozen.

Curry is common, a legacy of the East India Company and of the island's Asian arrivals, and Sunday roasts and other British home cooking fill out a repertoire that is more domestic than commercial. Fresh vegetables and fruit depend on the season and the local growers, and the shops sell them when there are any; between ships, choice narrows sharply.

Two island products stand out. Saint Helena coffee is produced in small quantities and exported as one of the most expensive coffees in the world. Tungi, a spirit distilled from the fruit of the prickly pear that covers the dry hillsides, is the local drink, made in the island's distillery alongside coffee liqueur, gin and rum. The cafés and bars of Main Street and the hotel dining rooms are where visitors meet both.