A Voyage to Remote

sailing to the A Voyage To Remote ends of the earth Saint Helena Island ❧ It was around six in the morning when the island was first spotted, though fog and waves obscured most of its rocky face; if you strained, you could just make out the corners that sloped to the sea, and imagine the rest. There was a healthy group of us congregating at the bow, impressive considering the bacchanalia that had taken place the night before at the final party of the final voyage of the final British Royal Mail Ship. It was poetic in a certain way that after five days at sea, all of our anticipation and excitement was further postponed by the island of St. Helena refusing to reveal itself, somehow fitting that after seeing so much of history wash up against its imposing cliffs the island still insisted on keeping some aspect of itself secret to us and the world. We had all boarded the R.M.S. St. Helena for different reasons, some because their grandfathers had sailed to the island when employed by the Union Castle steamship line, others because of an interest in Napoleon‘s original final resting place, still others because of a fascination with the astronomer Edmund Halley, who set up an observatory there in 1676, before he discovered the comet that would be his namesake. Most of us however would probably have struggled to fully articulate the magnetic pull of the island and her boat, why we were drawn to the romance of experiencing the end of an era; why we often at the very last moment decided to book passage and leave our confused and slightly worried relations scratching their heads on shore; to explain what we were missing from our lives that drove us to the ends of the earth to find. Words and Pictures by Michael Wilder Frazel ❧ A fellow passenger described the ship to me as ‘a trip back in time to a place that never really existed’, and between the bovril tea and the mandatory dress code for dinner, the performance of idealized Britishness often veered towards parody. St. Helena, our destination, is a rock in the middle of the South Atlantic owned and governed by the British government, twenty-five hundred miles from Brazil and twelve hundred miles from Namibia. Its inhabitants, unironically called ‘Saints’, swear allegiance to the crown and try to eek out a life in the middle of the Atlantic ocean. One ship has serviced the island non-stop for most of the last forty years, the R.M.S. St. Helena, a combination cargo ship and cruise ship that has recently been taken out of service because of the construction of a new airport on the island. We steamed from the West coast of Africa with Union Jacks waving and a hybrid Scottish/South African pipes band playing ‘Amazing Grace’, a tearful send- off for most of the crew and a vaguely confusing one for most of the passengers. The third officer Lungani Simonmani told me the ship was “simultaneously [St. Helena’s] queen, and their child. The only word to describe this boat to us is love.” Saints almost unanimously expressed their admiration and feelings of loss for ‘their’ ship, in a tone that one rarely ever hears; it’s hard to imagine someone mourning a bus or an airplane. But that’s just the effect St. Helena has, the strange and often subtle way that it changes you. Indeed, after five days at sea, people did start to relax into a different rhythm, the gentle rocking of the ship hypnotizing us into a way of existing that we hadn’t felt in a long time, if ever. Discovered: Population: Portuguese, 1600s Fast Island Facts: 4,486 Nation Status: Famous Emigrants: Primary Method Of Transport: Overseas British Territory Napoleon, Edmund Halley Air, Fly South African Airways Clockwise from above: The R.M.S. outside of Jamestown harbor; The camera crew at sunset on the R.M.S; A local ﬁsherman Siobhan on the hunt for Tuna and Whale Sharks; Longwood House, where Napoleon spent the last eleven years of his life ❧ Of course, our change in attitude could also have stemmed from the legendary amount of alcohol consumed on board. After some celebratory punch, it was open season on the bar and I was quickly introduced to the Gin & Tonic’s colonial cousin: the Gin & Dry Lemon. After two (or five) of those, the dinner bell rang and we all changed into our evening wear and settled into our assigned dinner seating for the next five days. Sitting next to me was Scilla, a Saint and reserved public policy expert who was returning home to present at an academic conference on the island, with eyes that sparkled whenever she started talking about home; Matt, a stratospherically successful music manager who was brash, hilarious, and intent on drinking his way to glory during a much needed vacation; Adam, seated across from us, a BBC radio technician and passionate cyclist who had lugged his bike with him and who’s bald spot grew with every antic we got him into; Anne, a retiree from Cape Town who’s deceased husband was a Solomon, the family monopoly that owns most of the private businesses on island; Terence, the chief entertainment officer who’s flashes of melancholy betrayed his enforced sunny demeanor; and Terrence’s wife Trish, the niece of the controversial Filipino president Rodrigo Duturte, who wore braces and unabashedly loved the Hard Rock Cafe. These eclectic pilgrims and myself, the bemused young American, forced together by seating cards, ended up becoming fast friends and professional drinking buddies. The second night, Matt leaned over and politely explained to me- in an aside laced with wonderfully colorful expletives- that drinking was Britain’s true national past time, and I had no reason to doubt that I had found myself amongst seasoned professionals. Alcohol was inextricable from the activities on the ship, from a casual beer during the on-board cricket tournament to a nip of gin at the pre-dinner Captain’s cocktail party, to the infamous Tungi, a local spirit made from the fruit of an island cactus that was an equal mix Absinthe, rubbing alcohol, and regrettable decisions. To say that the boat was powered on two different kinds of jet fuel would be to give the engines too much credit. ❧ Every one of our five days en route to the island had activities orchestrated by Terrence, our favorite forlorn chief entertainment officer. The opening event was deck quoits, a modified version of the archaic British game that was a hybrid of horseshoes and bean bags. I lost spectacularly, but ended up chatting up a trio of fellow younger travelers, Dominic, Oliver, and Joe, who quickly became good friends and indispensable resources on the island and its politics. The lads had already spent time on the island because they were in the process of making a documentary about the darker corners of St. Helena’s history, when it played a key but forgotten role in the British Empire’s fight against slavery during the second half of the 19th century. As one of the only stopping off points in the mid-Atlantic for captured slave ships and their cargo, conservative estimates populate mass burial grounds on the island with anywhere from ten to thirteen thousand remains, the largest amount of undisturbed physical evidence of the Middle Passage in the world. “The fact that this isn’t talked about, or even part of the discussion… it’s mad to think only three hundred or so bodies have been excavated so far, and the rest are not only forgotten but literally dug up to be paved over.” Dominic told me. This bleaker history exists uneasily with the island’s ongoing attempts to kickstart itself as a tourist destination, and indeed, the historically undeveloped valley where archaeologists believe most of the skeletons lie is currently being excavated for an industrial fuel farm to service the growing tourist demands. The tourism office has adopted the slogan ‘Secret of the South Atlantic’ and re-branded Saint Helena as ‘the most extraordinary place on Earth’. A slick promotional video available online shows attractive young people being adventurous and taking advantage of the island’s many hikes, spectacular dives, and ample opportunities to swim with whale sharks, since the island’s reefs serve as an important feeding grounds for the migrating giants. Further, St. Helena’s London-run government has recently gone all in with their economic re-organization by opening a new outpost of the luxury hotel chain Mantis in hopes that it can begin to attract the breed of high-end tourism that will allow the island to wean itself off the large amount of government support it currently requires. Though subjects of the British crown, Saints are a strange mix of cultures and nationalities; there were no native inhabitants when the East India Trading Company took over the island in 1660, so over the years the locals have become a mix of English, Dutch, and African peoples, not to forget Napoleon and his court’s small but mighty French influence. The Saints speak English, but their accent is Previous Page: The view from the deck of The Consulate, the island’s oldest hotel This Page: A room at the Mantis, the island’s newest hotel somewhere between the East End, the Creole Caribbean, and New Jersey (the last influence reinforced by the constant cacophony of honking horns that alert drivers to oncoming traffic around blind hairpin turns throughout the island).

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