Saint Helena's culture: one people out of everyone the ships landed

Who the Saints descend from

Who the Company brought to the island

The Portuguese found Saint Helena uninhabited in 1502 and formed no permanent settlement, so the island's people begin with the East India Company, whose first governor, John Dutton, arrived in 1659. In 1670 the population stood at 66, slaves included. A census in 1723 counted 1,110 inhabitants, 610 of them slaves.

Slaves were brought from the beginning. The government's heritage page says the first came mostly from East Africa or Madagascar; the early records cited in the Wikipedia account name the Cape Verde Islands and the Gold Coast, then India and Madagascar. Basil George, quoted in the government's World Heritage scoping report of July 2019, describes a Company society with different laws for settlers, the military, slaves and groups such as the Chinese indentured labourers, who began arriving in 1810 after the import of slaves was banned in 1792. The census of 1817, taken while Napoleon was held at Longwood, counted each group separately.

How the groups became one population

Emancipation came in stages. In 1818 Governor Hudson Lowe persuaded owners to free every child born to a slave after Christmas that year once the child reached its late teens, and more than 800 slaves were freed in a phased emancipation in 1827. Colin Fox's A Bitter Draught, a history of abolition on the island published in October 2017, records that the slaves were made to take out loans to buy their own freedom, and that repaying them became impossible after the island passed to the Crown in 1834 and its economy crashed.

Many of the Chinese labourers were allowed to remain after 1836 and their descendants joined the population; a few Boer prisoners chose to stay when the war ended in 1902. Britannica describes the result as a population largely of mixed European, mostly British, South and East Asian and African descent. The islanders are known as Saints, and the government's own account of island culture says they mainly identify as British and take pride in "being Saint". On census night, 7 February 2021, 4,114 of the 4,439 people living on Saint Helena were St Helenian.

Why Rupert's Valley became a burial ground

In 1840 Britain set up a Vice-Admiralty court on the island to try the crews of slave ships captured by the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron. The St Helena National Trust records that the court sat for 27 years, condemned 450 ships and freed more than 26,000 Africans, more than five times the island's population. The majority were housed in the Liberated African Establishment in Rupert's Valley, a camp of large tents and wooden huts that was at once a receiving centre, a hospital and a quarantine. Most were later shipped back to Africa or on to the West Indies and Cape Town, a small number settled, and about a third died in the valley.

Around 8,000 people are thought to lie in its upper and lower burial grounds, most of them children and teenagers, in graves that were never marked. Excavations in 2007 and 2008, ahead of the airport works, uncovered two unmarked mass graves and 325 intact skeletons, with name tags, metal bracelets, beads and necklaces among them.

Accounts of the reburial differ. The UK-St Helena Heritage Trust says members of the community reinterred the remains in August 2022, in coffins made by students at Prince Andrew School; the Wikipedia account says they were reburied en masse in 2022 "without ceremony of any kind". A study published in Science in July 2026 traced the childhood origins of 152 of the dead through strontium isotopes and ancient DNA, and placed most of them in western Central Africa, with a substantial minority from far inland, including interior Angola and parts of southeastern Africa.

The one building left from the establishment, No. 1 Building, went up in 1865 to house up to 80 former slaves. In March 2026 the National Trust announced a funding agreement for £165,000 with the Commonwealth Heritage Forum to restore it as a memorial and slavery interpretation centre, and in October 2026 the Garfield Weston Foundation pledged £40,000 towards the fit-out. The government's tourism plan for 2026 to 2031 sets it beside a proposed Zulu History Interpretation Centre. Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo, son of the Zulu king Cetshwayo, was held on the island from 1890 to 1897.

When Saint Helenian English got its native speakers

Daniel Schreier of the University of Zurich, writing in Cambridge University Press's The Lesser-Known Varieties of English in 2010, dates the origins of St Helenian English to the mid seventeenth century and the colony the East India Company established in 1658. That puts it more than a century ahead of the major varieties of South African, Australian and New Zealand English, and more than 150 years ahead of the English of Tristan da Cunha and the Falkland Islands. Native speakers have passed it on without a break since a short Dutch interregnum in the early 1670s, when a Dutch fleet under Jacob de Gens held the island for a few months.

English is the official language, and Britannica records it as the only one spoken. The everyday local form, furthest from the standard, is called Saint-speak, Saint or Saint English, and the Wikipedia account classes it as a form of South Atlantic English. The government describes the island as English-speaking "though often with a strong local dialect". Schreier's monograph on it, St Helenian English: Origins, Evolution and Variation, appeared in 2008.

Schooling has carried the standard form beside it. Attendance became compulsory in 1942, when the government took over the education system, and the first secondary school opened in 1946. The St Helena Secondary School, opened in 1988 as the Prince Andrew School, teaches students aged 11 to 18 to an English national curriculum adapted for local use. There is no tertiary education on the island, and students who go further do so abroad on scholarships.

Television reached the island in 1995, and Professor T. Charlton measured its effect from two years before its arrival to five years after, watching children in classrooms and playgrounds. He concluded that they stayed hard-working and well behaved, and that family and community controls shaped their behaviour more than television did.

Why the island's cathedral stands outside Jamestown

Which churches the Saints belong to

Most residents are Anglicans of the Diocese of St Helena, which has its own bishop and takes in Ascension; it marked its 150th anniversary in June 2009, and Tristan da Cunha was moved into it from the Diocese of Cape Town in 1869. Because Jamestown was "too raucous with its taverns and brothels", St Paul's Cathedral was built outside it. St James' Church in Jamestown dates from 1774 and lost its spire to structural weakness in 1980.

Other churches followed over two centuries: Baptists in 1845, Roman Catholics in 1852, the Salvation Army in 1884 and Seventh-day Adventists in 1949, then the New Apostolic Church and Jehovah's Witnesses, who in 2025 counted around one resident in 33 as a member. In the 2021 census 82.4% of St Helenians living in households said they had a faith, from 66.2% in Levelwood to 89.9% in Blue Hill.

How the church took up the citizenship question

The Bishop's Commission on Citizenship, set up at the fifteenth session of the Diocesan Synod in 1992, set out to restore the islanders' full citizenship and their right of abode in Britain, which the British Overseas Territories Act 2002 gave back; the politics article follows that dispute. From 1912 to 1945 the Jamestown Monthly, later the St Helena Church Magazine, also carried island news after the St Helena Guardian closed. In December 2017 the Legislative Council updated the Marriage Ordinance after a man applied to marry his male fiancé, and the first same-sex wedding on the island took place at Plantation House on 31 December 2018.

Where plo and Saint fishcakes come from

What a Saint table is built on

Julia Buckley, writing in The Independent in 2017, found the island's food "[p]retty retro, at least by London standards", and named two staples: fishcakes made in a St Helena style, bound with egg and spiced with chilli, and pilau, called plo, a curried rice dish close to the Indian pulao. The Wikipedia account adds that most local recipes are variations on dishes that travellers brought to the island.

Less than a third of the island is suitable for farming or forestry, and Britannica lists maize, potatoes and green vegetables as the main crops, with poultry, sheep, goats, cattle and pigs raised as well. Gardens fill part of the gap: in the 2021 census 35.6% of households grew vegetables or other food at home, from 15.6% in Jamestown to 64.2% in Blue Hill. Tuna is caught one fish at a time under the fishery's motto, "one pole, one line, one fish at a time", and the government's tourism plan lists traditional bamboo rod fishing among the island's cultural practices, with the fish fry at the Yacht Club.

The same plan records that fresh, locally produced food is limited in supply and range, that the number of places to eat has fallen since 2020 and that several restaurants and bars closed in 2024. It made local food the theme of Saint Helena Day 2026.

How Bourbon coffee reached Sandy Bay

Drink came with the ships too. In the Company's era governors tried to limit arrack, a spirit distilled from potatoes, and two attempts to restrict drinking set off garrison mutinies, over Christmas 1783 and in December 1811.

Coffee arrived in 1733, when Green Tipped Bourbon seeds were brought from the port of Mocha on the Company ship Houghton and planted around the island. London merchants Wm Burnie & Co called it of "very superior quality and flavour" in 1839, Napoleon's praise gave it a brief vogue in Paris in the years after his death, and coffee grown on the Bamboo Hedge Estate at Sandy Bay won a premier award at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The Island of St Helena Coffee Company, founded by David Henry in 1994, grew its crop on several sites, the Bamboo Hedge Estate among them, using the Green Tipped Bourbon plants imported in 1733. Tungi, the local name for the prickly pear, is also the name of a spirit made from its fruit, and the island's distillery makes a coffee liqueur, gin and rum.

Which days Saint Helena and Tristan keep

What Saint Helena Day marks

Saint Helena keeps nine public holidays, and one belongs to the island alone: Saint Helena Day on 21 May, the feast of Helena of Constantinople, after whom the island was named. By long tradition João da Nova sighted the island on 21 May 1502. A paper of 2015 questioned the date, which first appears in 1596 in Jan Huyghen van Linschoten and is Helena's feast in the Eastern Orthodox and most Protestant churches, and proposed 3 May, the Catholic feast of the finding of the True Cross. Full British citizenship was restored to the islanders on 21 May 2002, the same date.

The public service calendar is illustrated with a wirebird float from the Saint Helena Day celebrations of 2022, and the St Helena National Trust held a Culture Month in May 2026. The other eight follow the British and Christian year, and in 2026 the King's Birthday fell on Friday 13 November.

How Tristan keeps a calendar of its own

Tristan da Cunha keeps eleven public holidays. Anniversary Day on 14 August marks the annexation of 1816, and Ratting Day has no fixed date at all: the Chief Islander declares it each year and can move it at short notice for the weather. On Old Year's Night islanders traditionally went from house to house masked and disguised as Okalolies, singing, dancing and playing instruments, until a bell announced the new year at midnight. The male founders left seven surnames, Glass, Green, Hagan, Lavarello, Repetto, Rogers and Swain, and about 80% of Tristan's people are Anglican and 20% Roman Catholic.

Who has printed and broadcast the island's news

Saul Solomon set up the St Helena Press in 1806. The first island newspaper, the St Helena Advocate and Weekly Journal of News, appeared in 1851 and closed two years later, and most of its successors were short-lived too. The St Helena Guardian ran weekly from 1861 to 1925, while two humorous papers, The Bug and the Mosquito, both came and went in 1888.

Radio St Helena went on air on Christmas Day 1967. It closed at midnight on Christmas Day 2012, four days after Saint FM, launched in January 2005, had also shut, and the island was left with no broadcast radio. SaintFM Community Radio took over Saint FM's studios and frequencies on 10 March 2013. In 2023 three FM stations were broadcasting, one of them relaying the BBC World Service, and two weekly newspapers were published, the St Helena Independent, in print since November 2005, and the Sentinel, started in 2012. The Equiano submarine cable brought unlimited data plans for the first time in 2023; a report of 2019 had already found smartphones common and pointed to the "Saint Memes" Facebook page.

The public library has been open since 1813, when Governor Mark Wilks opened it, and a mobile library visits the rural districts each week. The Society for St Helena's Heritage, proposed by Governor Guy in November 1979, runs the Museum of St Helena, opened in 2002 in the Old Power House beside Jacob's Ladder.

Which games and walks the island keeps up

The St Helena Turf Club held the island's first recorded sporting events in 1818, a series of horse races at Deadwood. Scouting began in 1912, and Lord and Lady Baden-Powell visited the island's Scouts in 1937 on their way home from a tour of Africa. Saint Helena has sent teams to Commonwealth Games and belongs to the International Island Games Association. Its cricket team made its international debut in 2012, and its football team played its first tournament in 2019. The Governor's Cup, a yacht race from Cape Town to the island, is sailed every two years in December and January.

Jacob's Ladder, built by the Royal Engineers in 1871 up the valley side from Jamestown with 700 steps, one since covered in repairs, is the course of a timed run every year that draws entrants from abroad. In February 2026 the Croatian swimmer Dina Levačić became the first person to swim around the island, 48 kilometres in 17 hours and 13 minutes.

Walking is organised as a collection. Each of the Post Box Walks ends at a post box holding a signature book and a stamp, and the routes run from 1.5 to 12 kilometres. Four new walks opened for the Festival of Walking at the start of 2025, bringing the number from the original 21 to 25, and the tourism plan of December 2025 records every trail on the island as accredited to the Green Flag Eco Trails standard. Lace-making has a documented start as well: Emily Jackson began encouraging it as an island industry in 1890, and a lace-making school opened in 1908.

Why Swindon came to be called Swindolena

Saints have emigrated in periods of unemployment since the years after Napoleon, mostly to Britain and South Africa and, in the early years, to Australia. A report of 2019 found that "by the 1970s, a majority of Saints were working abroad and sending money home". The British Nationality Act 1981 narrowed the routes: for the next twenty years many islanders could find only low-paid government work at home, and the only jobs open to them abroad were on the Falkland Islands and Ascension. Ascension's census of February 2016 counted 806 residents, 556 of them from Saint Helena, on an island that has never had an indigenous population and grants no right of abode.

The restoration of citizenship in 2002 opened Britain, and emigration there by a wider range of wage-earners accelerated. By 2018 enough Saints had settled in Swindon, in Wiltshire, for the town to be nicknamed Swindolena. The island's population fell from 5,157 at the census of 1998 to 4,257 in 2008, and the census counted 4,534 residents in 2016 and 4,439 in 2021. The government's tourism plan names communities of Saint heritage in the Western Cape, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia and the United States, and sets out a Diaspora Initiative, with diaspora attendance at Culture Month and Saint Helena Day among its measures. Research cited in the Wikipedia account found in 2020 that Saints visiting friends and relatives stayed about a month, against a week for other tourists.

Those who stay are older, and most have been away. The 2021 census counted 1,087 resident St Helenians aged 65 or over, a quarter of everyone on the island and 18% more than in 2016, and put the rise down to longer lives and to Saints coming back from work in Britain, Ascension and the Falklands. Of the St Helenians born on the island, 83.4% had left it at least once to visit another country.

The economy article follows the money that work abroad sends home.