Saint Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha

All three island groups are volcanic, raised from the Atlantic floor far from any continent. Saint Helena, about 1,900 km off Angola, is an eroded shield volcano of around 122 km², cut by deep valleys and ringed by cliffs. Ascension, about 1,300 km to the north-west, is younger, with cinder cones and lava fields. Tristan da Cunha, about 2,400 km from Cape Town, is a single cone rising 2,062 m to Queen Mary's Peak, and it last erupted in 1961.

Isolation produced endemic species found nowhere else: on Saint Helena, the gumwood, the Saint Helena ebony, tree ferns and cabbage trees of the central ridge, hundreds of endemic invertebrates, and one surviving endemic land bird, the wirebird (Saint Helena plover). Centuries of goats, rats, timber-cutting and flax plantations destroyed most native forest; conservation projects such as the Millennium Forest at Longwood are replanting gumwoods.

Ascension was almost bare when Charles Darwin visited in 1836. On the advice of the botanist Joseph Hooker, the Royal Navy planted trees and shrubs from around the world on Green Mountain, creating a man-made cloud forest. The island is also one of the Atlantic's largest nesting sites for green turtles, which swim from Brazil to breed. Tristan's outlying islands, Gough and Inaccessible, are a UNESCO World Heritage site for their seabirds, and huge marine protected areas now surround all three groups.

Portuguese sailors found Saint Helena on 21 May 1502, the feast of Saint Helena, and kept it secret as a watering stop. The Dutch claimed it briefly; in 1659 the English East India Company occupied it and built a fort in the narrow valley that became Jamestown. For two centuries the island existed to supply ships returning from India and China with water, fresh food and repairs.

The Company brought settlers from Britain, soldiers, and enslaved people from Madagascar, India, Indonesia and West Africa; later it brought Chinese labourers. Slavery ended gradually, with final emancipation in 1832. The mix of these peoples produced the Saints, with their own accent, surnames and customs.

When the Crown took over in 1834 and steamships and the Suez Canal (1869) changed the shipping routes, the island's importance faded. A flax industry supplied string and rope until 1966, when synthetic fibres ended it. Jamestown's Georgian streets, the Castle, the fortifications and Jacob's Ladder — a funicular incline built in 1829 whose 699 steps remain — date from the Company era.

After Waterloo, the British government chose Saint Helena as a prison from which Napoleon could not escape, as he had from Elba. He landed in October 1815 with a small entourage, stayed briefly at the Briars pavilion, then moved to Longwood House, a damp former farmhouse on a windy upland plateau. Britain garrisoned Ascension and Tristan da Cunha to prevent any rescue.

At Longwood Napoleon dictated his memoirs, quarrelled with the governor, Sir Hudson Lowe, and declined in health. He died on 5 May 1821 and was buried in the Sane Valley under willows. In 1840 his body was returned to Paris and placed in Les Invalides; the tomb in the valley is empty.

In 1858 Britain transferred Longwood House and the tomb to France, and the Briars pavilion followed in 1959. They are French state property, managed by an honorary French consul, and restored in recent years with original furniture. For many visitors they are the reason to make the long journey.

After Britain banned the slave trade, the Royal Navy's West Africa Squadron patrolled for slave ships. From 1840 to 1872 captured ships were brought to Saint Helena, and about 26,000 Africans were landed at the Liberated African Establishment in Rupert's Valley. Many had endured terrible conditions at sea; thousands died and were buried in the valley. Survivors were sent on to the Caribbean or South Africa, and some stayed on the island.

Archaeologists uncovered mass graves in Rupert's Valley during the airport works in the 2000s, and the remains were reburied in 2022. The site is now recognised as one of the most important physical traces of the transatlantic slave trade's final years, and memorial plans are part of the island's heritage work.

The island continued to be used as a place of exile: the Zulu king Dinuzulu from 1890 to 1897, around 6,000 Boer prisoners of war from 1900 to 1902, and three Bahraini political prisoners in the 1950s. The Boer cemetery at Knollcombes and the camp sites at Deadwood recall that period.

Ascension was garrisoned by the Royal Navy in 1815 and was long run as a 'stone frigate', HMS Ascension. It became a station for undersea telegraph cables, then for the BBC World Service relay, satellite tracking and, from 1942, the US-built Wideawake Airfield. It was the staging base for the 1982 Falklands campaign. No one has a right of abode: its roughly 800 residents are contract workers, many of them Saints, and visitors need a visa and permission.

When the garrison left Tristan da Cunha in 1817, Corporal William Glass, his family and a few others stayed. Shipwrecked sailors and a handful of women brought from Saint Helena joined them, and today's roughly 240 islanders share seven surnames. The community holds land in common, farms potatoes and sheep, and lives from a certified rock lobster fishery.

In October 1961 a volcanic eruption beside the settlement forced the whole population to evacuate to England. Most chose to return in 1963, a decision that drew international attention. Tristan is reached only by a few ships a year from Cape Town, and visitors need permission from the Island Council.

Saint Helena's population, about 4,400, has fallen from over 5,000 as young people left for work on Ascension, the Falklands and in Britain, especially after full British citizenship was restored in 2002. The island depends on UK budget support, and its economy centres on government jobs, small business, fishing, coffee and tourism.

For decades the only link to the world was the Royal Mail Ship St Helena, a five-day voyage from Cape Town. An airport, controversial for its cost and for wind shear problems on approach, opened to scheduled flights in October 2017, and the RMS made its last voyage in 2018. The Equiano subsea cable, landed in 2023, brought fast internet for the first time.

Island life is sociable and small-scale: people wave from cars, Sunday church and sports clubs matter, and news travels fast. Food leans on fish — tuna fishcakes and plo, a curried rice dish — and on what arrives on the monthly supply ship. Jonathan, the giant tortoise at Plantation House, believed to have hatched around 1832, has become the island's most famous resident.