Islands of Exile: A trip to Robben Island and St. Helena Island aboard the Seven SeasVoyager.
Story and photos (unless otherwise indicated) by Hilary Kaiser
“How exciting!” we thought. The brochure of the Seven Seas Voyager, a ship owned by the Regent Cruise Line, described how we would be spending a full day exploring St. Helena, the remote island in the South Atlantic where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled and died. In fact, this was one of the reasons why my companion and I, both history buffs, as well as many other passengers, decided to take Regent’s two-week “continent repositioning” cruise sailing from Cape Town to Rio de Janeiro.
We had each already visited, individually, both cities, but on my previous visit to Cape Town 15 years before, unlike my companion, I hadn’t had the opportunity to visit the infamous Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was incarcerated for 18 years (from 1964 to 1982) for his anti-apartheid activities. Since we had two full days in Cape Town before embarking on our cruise, I decided to take a local tour of the island, which was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 1999 and is located 4.3 miles (16.9 km) off the coast of Cape Town.
The ferry boat ride through the white-capped waters of Table Bay took about 45 minutes. It was so rough that several people on board got sick. Luckily I didn’t, maybe because I was preoccupied with taking photos for Facebook of the bay and beautiful Table Mountain in the distance! Upon landing, we were shepherded into a bus that took us for a short tour of the island, beginning at its tip, from where we had a lovely view of Table Mountain — a view which the prisoners undoubtedly were never able to see. Driving back to the prison complex, which was near the dock, we passed the prisoners’ graveyard and the limestone quarry where they were forced to perform hard labor.
Arriving at the prison gate, we were greeted by our guide, a former political prisoner (but after Mandela had left), who gave us a brief history of the island. He described how, up until the 17th century, it had been used by Portuguese, Dutch, and English ships as a fueling station. Since that time and until 1991, it was used as a maximum security prison for political prisoners of different nationalities, as well as for common criminals; at times in the 19th century, it was even a leper colony.
Our guide shared with us accounts of the conditions and experiences he and others endured while they were imprisoned. He also showed us the communal areas, the courtyards, and the political prisoners’ cells, including the one where Mandela was a prisoner for 18 of the 27 years he was confined.
One thing that really struck me was that none of the cells had bunks. Almost all of the prisoners slept on narrow rough mats laid out on the concrete floor. For exercise, they would be taken to the courtyard of their “section” (Mandela’s was Section B), where they were made to sit on the cement and break stones or mend prison uniforms.
Our guide also showed us where Mandela and several others had planted a few seeds in a corner of the courtyard. A plaque with words taken from his autobiography, A Long Walk to Freedom, now commemorates the spot. It reads: “To plant a seed, watch it grow, to tend it and then harvest it, offered a simple but enduring satisfaction. The sense of being the custodian of this small patch of earth offered a taste of freedom.”
On the way back to Cape Town on the ferry, I thought back on my day on Robben Island. What I’d seen had been truly eye-opening and heart-rending. I couldn’t help thinking about the courage Mandela and the other prisoners needed to endure such horrific conditions for so many years, and and how he felt a sense of freedom from planting a tiny seed in a concrete courtyard. I made a promise to myself then and there that I would reread A Long Walk to Freedom.
Ironically enough, as I did, I looked up and noticed a video that was playing on the screen above where I was sitting. Obviously taken from a home movie during South Africa’s apartheid era, it showed the island from an entirely different perspective — that of a blond little girl, probably the daughter of one of the white prison guards or administrative staff. Speaking in Afrikaans with English subtitles, she was saying how wonderful Robben Island was and that living on it was like living in paradise!
Thirty-six hours after my visit to Robben Island, we boarded the Seven Seas Voyager and sailed up the coast from South Africa to Namibia, where we docked in Walvis Bay for a night. During the next day and a half, we visited a township near Swakopmund, a stretch of the Namib desert, Moon Valley, and a family-owned oasis. Then from Walvis Bay, our ship headed west across the South Atlantic Ocean. It would take us three full days at sea before we reached our next destination, St. Helena, which is 1,210 miles (1,950 kilometers) from the coast of Africa.
In anticipation of our visit, we had done research about the remote island, which, like its “sister” islands — Ascension to the north and Tristan Da Cunha to the south — is a British Overseas Territory. Originally discovered by the Portuguese in the 16th century, the volcanic tropical island was taken over by the British East India Company in the second half of the 17th century and was a stopover for ships traveling between Europe and Asia. In 1834, the British government usurped it from the East India Company, and it became a Crown Colony. Never very populated, the island today has about 4,500 residents, who are often referred to as “Saints”, a nickname they adopted centuries ago because they live on SAINT Helena island.
Just as Robben Island had a famous political prisoner living on it, so did St. Helena. In 1815, following Napoleon Bonaparte’s final defeat at Waterloo and so that he couldn’t escape the way he had from Elba in the Mediterranean, the British exiled the French general, together with a number of his officers, their wives and families, to this tiny island in the middle of the South Atlantic.
Napoleon and his entourage lived in a restricted but quite comfortable manner on the island until 1821 when he passed away following an illness that included abdominal pain, vomiting, and weight loss. (Was it stomach cancer, poisoning from arsenic in the wallpaper, or arsenic poisoning from some other source? The mystery remains.)
Despite its remote location and because of its famous exile, St. Helena attracts a fair share of tourists, many arriving on cruise ships such as ours. Places to visit on the island include Jamestown, the island’s quaint English-style capital; Longwood House, Napoleon’s 20-room mansion, now a museum owned by the French government; the graveyard where Napoleon was once buried (his remains were returned to France in 1840); and Plantation House, the residence of the British governor. In addition to visiting historical sites, tourists can also enjoy watching gigantic whale sharks swim in the Atlantic, deep-sea diving, and hiking.
Awaking at sunrise after our third day at sea, we were understandably thrilled when we saw what appeared to be a huge rock rising from the ocean. An hour later, the ship dropped anchor offshore from Ruperts Wharf (the commercial dock in the next cove over from Jamestown). Most of us were ready and excited: It was a beautiful sunny day, the sea looked calm, and soon we’d be boarding the “tenders” (lifeboats) that would take us ashore to the jetty several hundred yards away.
Alas, however, our visit to St. Helena was not to be! At 8 a.m. an announcement from the Captain came over the ship’s intercom system: The wind was causing waves to crash against the harbor walls, and he and the Harbor Master thought it wasn’t safe for the tenders to land.
He would nevertheless send a lifeboat with his Security Officer ashore as a trial run, and after it returned, he, the Security Officer, and the Harbor Master would reassess the situation.
Unfortunately, two hours later, after the lifeboat had returned to our vessel, the Captain made a second announcement that the situation was still too risky and that we would be setting out to sea again for the five-day crossing to South America. Soon afterwards we felt the ship pull up anchor. There would be nowhere else to stop on the way, just an ocean a mile deep under our keel.
To say we were disappointed is an understatement as many of us had booked the cruise specifically because it included a visit to St. Helena.
Obviously, the maritime gods were against us this time round, and because of its remoteness, I doubt I’ll ever get back to St. Helena. Still, I was glad I’d gotten a glimpse of it from the sea, if only from a distance, and I’d learned quite a bit reading up about it.
In fact, looking back on my visit to Robben Island and my almost-visit to St. Helena, in addition to the scenery and the adventure of discovering them, I realized that both islands in the South Atlantic had provided me with interesting information and stories about two very different periods from the past.
Freedom-fighter Mandela had truly suffered during the 18 years he was on Robben Island, but following his release from Victor Verster Prison in 1990, he went on to become South Africa’s acclaimed first black president in the country’s first fully representative democratic election. Conversely, Napoleon — the defeated Emperor of the French — was able to play chess, cultivate a garden, dine on plentiful food, and drink imported wine while he was a prisoner at Longwood House; but, as fate would have it, after only six years, he died a sick and lonely man on a remote island in the middle of the ocean.
Ah, the irony of history…
