The Portuguese and Spanish soon gave up regularly calling at the island, partly because they used ports along the West African coast, but also because of attacks on their shipping, the desecration of their chapel and religious icons, killings of their livestock, and destruction of their plantations by Dutch pirates. In developing their Far East trade, the Dutch also began to frequent the island. Further visits by other English explorers followed and, once Saint Helena's location was more widely known, English ships of war began to lie in wait in the area to attack Portuguese India carracks on their way home. Įnglishman Sir Francis Drake probably located the island on the final leg of his circumnavigation of the world (1577–1580). They formed no permanent settlement, but the island was an important rendezvous point and source of food for ships travelling by Cape Route from Asia to Europe, and frequently sick mariners were left on the island to recover before taking passage on the next ship to call at the island. The long tradition that João da Nova built a chapel from one of his wrecked carracks has been shown to be based on a misreading of the records. They imported livestock, fruit trees and vegetables, and built a chapel and one or two houses.
The Portuguese found the island uninhabited, with an abundance of trees and fresh water. An analysis has been published of the Portuguese ships arriving at St Helena in the period 1502–1613. His pilots entered the island onto their charts and it has been suggested that this event was likely decisive in leading to the utilisation of the island as a regular stopover for rest and replenishment for ships en route from India to Europe, from that date until well into the seventeenth century. The Portuguese probably planted saplings rather than mature trees, and for these to be sufficiently large by 1510 to carry carvings suggests the plants were shipped to the island and planted there some years earlier, possibly within a few years of discovery.Ī third discovery story, told by the 16th-century historian Gaspar Correia, holds that the island was found by the Portuguese nobleman and warrior Dom Garcia de Noronha, who sighted the island on his way to India in late 1511 or early 1512. When Linschoten arrived on he reported seeing carvings made by visiting seamen on a fig tree that were dated as early as 1510. And after we left the island of Saint Helena, we saw another island two hundred miles from there, which is called Ascension". The island's map location with respect to Ascension and the Cape of Good Hope was likewise described following the 1505 Portuguese expedition led by Francisco de Almeida which passed the island on its home voyage but did not land - "n the twenty-first day of July we saw land, and it was an island lyng six hundred and fifty miles from the Cape, and called Saint Helena, howbeit we could not land there.
Thomé Lopes mapped St Helena's geographic position with reasonable accuracy when he quoted its distance and direction with respect to locations such as Ascension, Cape Verde, São Tomé and the Cape of Good Hope. Other Portuguese explorers who landed at an earlier date include João da Nova in 1502 and Estêvão da Gama in 1503.Īnother theory holds that the island found by da Nova was actually Tristan da Cunha, 2,430 kilometres (1,510 mi) to the south, and that Saint Helena was discovered by some of the ships attached to the squadron of the Estêvão da Gama expedition on 30 July 1503 (as reported in the account of clerk Thomé Lopes).
Portuguese Viceroy Francisco de Almeida passed the island in 1505 but could not land. 10.6 Satellite ground stations / Earth stations.1.3 British rule (1815–1821) and Napoleon's exile.