After the 100 Days: Longwood

The title of this post points in a couple of directions simultaneously.  Firstly, I realised that my previous post, concerning a brief AAR from a Napoleonic encounter, was actually my hundredth post, which by any reckoning is a milestone from when I started this blog almost exactly four years ago.  Secondly, I happened to be on the remote island of St Helena at the time I started the blog, and therefore there is a connection to Napoleon and his final 100 Days, this being the bicentenary of Waterloo and all that.

There is a lot of very interesting military (and other) history relating to the island, discussed here and here and possibly here, but as the photos have been burning a hole in my hard drive for four years I thought I'd post a few here of our visit to the final residence of Napoleon Bonaparte, at Longwood.

View from Diana's Peak looking NE towards Longwood, Flagstaff Hill and The Barn

The first thing is context and setting.  St Helena is approximately 10 miles by 12 miles across and is located in the South Atlantic, some 1,370 miles SSW of Luanda on the Angolan coast.  There is no airport (one is being built currently on Prosperous Bay Plain, not far from Longwood), so when we went there in 2011 your choice was three days from Ascension or six days from Cape Town (only 1,950 miles as the albatross flies), by boat.  We did both legs of the RMS St Helena's voyages.  Anyway, the above photo shows where Longwood is, hidden in the dark green ridge in the centre of the photo.  Flagstaff is the pointy green hill and The Barn is the one that looks like a barn.

Longwood House

Longwood itself is very small and is certainly not a palace.  In fact it was a farm before Napoleon was placed there - he never liked it and I can understand why.  It seemed damp and claustrophobic even when we were here.  For some reason I didn't take any pictures in his main living area - I think it was because it was so small, dark and depressing and there were too many other visitors there.

Napoleon's deathmask

The main features I noted were the deep copper bath he apparently spent a lot of time in and his bed, the one he died in.  The dining room seemed to have a bit more life to it but it was not particularly big.

Napoleon's dining table and chairs

The walls had few pictures of note - mainly portraits of Napoleon and some of his Marshals, including this one of Murat, looking a bit pleased with himself.  Perhaps because he wasn't trapped on St Helena.

Murat

Napoleon was clearly pretty miserable there and it is perhaps surprising that he lasted as long as seven years before he died in 1822.  I did scrutinise the wallpaper closely for signs of arsenic but they told me that, although it was the same pattern, none of the original stuff remained...

Flagstaff with flagstaff

Once the airport is built I am sure that Longwood will become far more of a tourist attraction than it is at present.  The Saints sort of try to make something of it when the cruise ships come in (they don't try that hard), although sometimes you have to be pretty observant to spot things, like this mannequin of Napoleon on the balcony of the Consulate Hotel in Jamestown.

Napoleon at the Consulate.  The bar is downstairs.  We referred to it as the Disconsolate.

He's actually looking across the road at the house that Sir Arthur Wellesley once stayed in on his way to India before he was famous, now called Wellington House.

Wellington House.  Since repainted, but still blue.

This picture of Wellington House was taken from our apartment which was across the road, and which happened to be on the site of the first house that Napoleon stayed in when he arrived on the island.  Anyway, enough of this, back to wargaming.

Travelling Man

Well, it’s been a quick six weeks but this will probably be my last post for a while. We’ve been on St Helena since the end of February and now it’s time to go. I’ve not dwelt on island issues in this blog apart from highlighting some of the interesting East India Company fortifications that the island has to offer. If you want to see more of the island, visit the memsahib’s blog so you can see what the place looks like.   And me being silly.

The journey back to ‘civilisation’ is a long one as there is no airport here (yet) so we have to take the RMS St Helena to Cape Town, which takes about 5 days. Only Tristan da Cunha is more remote (one of the group is actually called Inaccessible Island).  It took three days sailing from Ascension Island to get here in the first place so this leg will seem quite a cruise. I don’t think I will ever get used to the beef tea served at 1030 every day although I will be quite the expert at deck quoits. Thereafter we’re staying in South Africa for a week or so and hope to be back in Scotland by May (we can fly the last bit). 

There are a few days to go before we leave the island in fact but Cable & Wireless cut off the internet early in case you forget to pay... so I’ll be offline from this weekend unless I can hook up somewhere temporarily. However, I’ve one or two things to do before we leave.  One of those is to visit Longwood House, where Napoleon spent the last years of his life. If it’s at all interesting I’ll do a post about it when I get back. 

Finally, I just wanted to say that it’s been great here and the people are so friendly. Imagine nearly everyone you pass in the street saying hello and almost every car driver waving as they go past. The terrain and landscape is fantastic and the precipitous roads and hairpin bends a joy. And of course the ecology, wildlife, landscape and relaxed lifestyle here are amazing and in some cases unique, all of which is worth preserving. 

I hope that we’ll be able to come back here one day, but in the meantime this is the Wishful Wargamer logging out for a few weeks. See you when I get back. 

Cheers

St Helena - Sandy Bay Lines

Although James Bay at Jamestown on the north side of the island is its most sheltered anchorage (see earlier post), there are quite a few other potential landing places around the island’s precipitous coast, all of which were fortified in one way or another.

One of these is at Sandy Bay on the exact opposite side of the island from Jamestown, where the Sandy Bay Lines were constructed in the mid 18th century. Below is a plan from 1825.

As you can see the lines originally blocked off the two possible landing points in this area: at Sandy Bay Valley (the larger of the two) and Broad Gut, separated by a rocky promontory (Beach Hill). Here is a photo of the lines from 1863. 

The fortification and parade ground on the Sandy Bay Valley side has now been completely removed and/or washed away, but the small section at Broad Gut (in the background of the photo) is still there and in quite a good state of repair. Here are some pictures I took of this when we visited.

You can see the two gun positions in the top of the wall and at the far end an archway through which a stream flows into Sandy Bay.

The second photo is looking down from Beach Hill, where there is a (recently constructed) ‘battery’ with gun, probably a 12pdr smoothbore.

Given the history of this remote island an attempt by loyal French forces to land somewhere, bypass the defences and rescue Napoleon from Longwood, before whisking him off to Brazil or elsewhere, might make an interesting skirmish mini-campaign. And an excellent opportunity to use the Fire & Steel skirmish rules available from The Keep, should I ever get around to it.

St Helena - Jamestown Lines

I mentioned in an earlier post that I am currently somewhere remote (more remote than Scotland, that is), but did not specify that I am actually working on the (substantially remote) South Atlantic island of St Helena, famed for keeping Napoleon out of mischief for the last few years of his life.

In case you’re not exactly sure where St Helena is just imagine you're steaming east from Brazil and if you find you’ve hit Angola then you’ve gone too far (St Helena being about 1,200 miles west of the African coast). As there's no airport (yet) it takes 3 days by boat from Ascension Island to get here (and Ascension isn't easy to get to in itself) so that by any standard is ‘remote’.

Since St Helena’s discovery in 1503 (by the Portuguese) and its eventual occupation by the English in the 17th century, fortification building has been a major past-time on the island. There are many of these defensive structures still in existence and I’ve managed to get around a few of them in my short time on the island.

The most prominent of these is actually at Jamestown itself, which is the capital of St Helena and is located at the island’s most sheltered anchorage. The town is squeezed into a deep ravine with very steep hills more than 200m high on both sides.

Not surprisingly there are substantial fortifications commanding the bay, not least the curtain wall, two half bastions and a dry moat that separates the town from the sea, the Jamestown Lines. These were built between 1708 and 1714 by Governor Roberts. Here is a photo from 1862 of the defences taken from above West Rocks.

As the battery position from which the 1862 photo was taken is now inaccessible due to rockfalls, I took this picture from the eastern side from the track leading up to Munden’s Hill (about three hours ago).  As you can see the defences are pretty much as they were (apart from the swimming pool and outer sea wall - which is actually under construction in the 1862 photograph) and apparently represent one of the best preserved examples of East India Company fortifications in existence.

And speaking of Munden's Hill, here is one of the 9-inch 12 ton rifled muzzle loaders (RML) lying behind the emplacement at Munden’s Hill battery at an elevation of about 150m above James Bay.   From what I've read it was probably removed in the early 1900s.

It is quite unusual to see these still about because normal practice when guns were decommissioned seemed to be to heave them over the cliff...