St Helena (generally called St Heléna, not St Heléna), a lonely island in the Atlantic, 1200 miles from the west coast of Africa, 1695 from Capetown, and 4477 from Southampton, measures 10 miles by 8, and has an area of 47 sq. m. It is part of an old volcano, and reaches 2823 feet in High Hill. Its shores face the ocean as perpendicular cliffs 600 to 2000 feet high, and are in many places cleft by deep, narrow valleys. The climate is pretty constant and generally healthy. Whale-fishing and the growing of potatoes are the principal occupations of the inhabitants, 6444 in 1871, 5059 in 1881, 4116 in 1891. Previous to the cutting of the Suez Canal St Helena was a favourite port of call for vessels bound to and from India by the Cape of Good Hope, and the inhabitants did a large trade in furnishing these vessels with provisions and other supplies. But the shorter route afforded by the Canal and the Red Sea has greatly lessened its importance. The imports were, in 1884, in value, £41,816; in 1896, £30,950. The exports of the island's produce in 1884 were £1436, and in 1896 £746. The revenue, which in 1884 was £12,186, was in 1896 £9161, the expenditure for the same years being £11,209 and £8872. The public debt, which in 1890 was £2250, was in 1896 nil. The value of the whale-fishery varies from £13,000 to £30,000 per annum. Jamestown, the capital, is a second-class imperial coaling-station, and is strongly fortified. St Helena is largely used as a recruiting station for the West Indian Squadron. Efforts have of late been made to promote the still declining prosperity of the island by establishing fisheries and the fish-curing industry. St Helena was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502, and taken possession of by the British East India Company in 1651. They remained masters of the island down to 1834; since that time it has been administered by a governor and an executive council of five members. The island was the place of Napoleon Bonaparte's imprisonment from 1815 to his death in 1821, at the farmhouse of Longwood, three miles inland from Jamestown; and near Longwood he was first buried. Again in 1899 St Helena was used by Britain as quarters for prisoners of war, many of the captured Boers, including Cronje and Schiel, being deported thither.
See Melliss, St Helena (1875); Brooke, History of St Helena (1808-24); and books cited at NAPOLEON.