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port for fresh provisions, &c., they called at St. Helena, finding it
safer and more accessible than the Cape of Good Hope, and a thousand
ships a year was the average number that cast anchor in the
roadstead. But they now make swifter passages, they are better
manned, better provisioned, and can easily make a voyage from the
East to Europe without the delay of an intermediate stoppage.
I t is these causes, more than the opening of the Suez Canal route,
that lessen the number of ships calling at St. Helena and reduced it
in the year 1870 to 677. This, of course, chiefly tends to lessen
the prosperity of the place, but the disbanding of the St. Helena
Regiment, and, after it had been replaced for several years by
detachments of Line regiments from the Cape of Good Hope,
the entire withdrawal of that portion of the garrison, aided very
considerably in reducing the local revenue from 21,000/. to about
14,000/. per annum.
The view taken of St. Helena hy the Home Government has, I
think, altogether been a mistake. I t has been looked upon as a colony,
and,under the management of the Colonial Office, made self-supporting.
I t has, however, no claim to the former, and endeavours to make it
the latter must end in failure. The place is really a fortification,
and, as the key to the whole South Atlantic, is one of England s
greatest fortresses, and as such ought to he under the control of
either the Admiralty or the War Department.
The Government maintains there now only a small garrison,
consisting of a battery of Artillery and a company of Boyal
Engineers, and it spends annually about 1000/. upon military works,
so that the fortifications are in ruins and neglected, and what new
batteries have been undertaken remain in an unfinished state, while
the modern guns sent out from England lie here and there
unmounted and half buried in rock and debris.*
An artillery officer told me a few years ago, that if he was
required to man the batteries in the Island he would be able to
place but one man to each g u n ; and the defences altogether wear
such a dilapidated appearance that foreign naval and military
* I t must not be understood that the officers stationed at St. Helena are responsible for
this state of things. Governors, as well as able engineer officers, including, of late years;
Colonel Stace, R.E., and General Freeth, B.E., have repeatedly urged «MHjB Home Government
the importance of maintaining the Island in an efficiently fortified state.
visitors to the place are struck with astonishment. Of course the
idea of the Government in allowing these things so to he, is that of
economy, hut it is highly questionable economy, and there can be
little doubt that Koffee Kalkalli, King of Ashantee, against whom
England lately went forth to war, has, to some extent, taken his
measure of British greatness from the ruined and deserted batteries
of St. Helena, and the apparent inability of England to place and
maintain them in proper order.*
* Many liberated Africans, after residing for thirty years at St. Helena, whose
only knowledge of England has been her ruined fortresses there, and her apparent inability
to spend more than a few thousand pounds occasionally upon them, have returned to
their native country, Africa, and doubtless taken with them many tales of England’s poverty.