Weather has continued fine, with fair, following winds. Commander Wild improving steadily and eating better than I have ever known him to do. He has a good deal to make up, for he lost a great deal of weight in Cape Town.
Yesterday I stowed some cases for Jeff and bound them with pyrometa wire. To-day Jeff and Dell removed the wardroom stove, which we shall no longer need, thank goodness, for with the down draught from squaresail and topsail the smoke nearly always went the wrong way.
July 20th.
Engines stopped, and we lay to for a bottom dredging. We wound in the line by hand. Good old man-power!—we always come down to it in the end. The whole job took about eight hours; it is good exercise, but towards the end becomes a bit of a toil. Whilst stopped we were surrounded by albatross, and Green and Watts succeeded in catching some alive. Good-looking birds were passed to Wilkins, the poorer specimens were set free (this is subject for a moral).
The next few days were uneventful. I had by now quite got over my illness and begun to go about as usual.
On July 27th we arrived at St. Helena, which was of interest to me because in my first voyage as a boy in an old sailing ship we had called here and I had not been back since.
This island has a most interesting history. It was first discovered in 1592 by Juan de Nova Castilla, one of the enterprising Portuguese navigators of those days, who claimed it for Portugal. Since then it has two or three times changed hands. The East India Company used it as a port of call for a long time, but handed it over to the British Government in 1833. Under the company’s administration the island prospered exceedingly. The famous navigator, Captain Cook, who visited the island in 1775, speaks of finding its people “living in delightful little homes amongst pleasant surroundings,” and describes them as the nicest people of English extraction he had ever met. The Government, on taking over, seemed to have a much less sympathetic understanding of the island and its people, for since that time its prosperity has steadily declined. It was used and is chiefly known to the world as the prison of such men as Napoleon, Cronje and others.
From the sea the island is very unprepossessing, rising steeply from the water’s edge and looking bare, hot and dry. Jamestown, the port, lies in a valley which runs backwards and upwards from the sea in a straggling and ever-narrowing line. From the anchorage one gets a refreshing glimpse of green on the inner slopes. One of the first things that catches the eye on looking ashore is a huge ladder, nearly a thousand feet long and over six hundred feet high, which passes from Jamestown to the summit of Ladder Hill. It contains seven hundred steps, to the top of which, in days gone by, a postman carrying his bag of letters used to run without a halt.
Having passed through the usual port formalities, I got ready to go ashore. Whilst preparing to leave, the ship was called up from the “Observatory,” and I received an invitation from H.E. the Governor to lunch at his house, together with two or three of my officers. I took Worsley, McIlroy and Macklin with me.
Jamestown is protected from the sea by a wall, and we entered through iron gates which no doubt in the days of Napoleon always had an armed guard. There is nothing of that sort to-day, and, indeed, St. Helena is an island that has “seen better days.” At one time a flourishing settlement and an important military station famous as the prison of Napoleon, it is now almost forgotten by the rest of the world.