Saint Helena is a volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean, roughly 1,900 kilometers west of the Angolan coast. Population: approximately 4,500 people. It observes UTC+0, Greenwich Mean Time, year-round. No daylight saving.

The IANA identifier is Atlantic/St_Helena.

At 16 degrees South latitude, Saint Helena’s daylight hours vary by only about an hour across the year. There is no practical argument for DST. The island simply sits at UTC+0, which is a reasonable alignment for its longitude of 5.7 degrees West.

Napoleon’s last years

Saint Helena’s singular place in history comes from six years of residence by Napoleon Bonaparte, from 1815 until his death in 1821.

After his defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, Napoleon surrendered to the British, who were not going to make the same mistake they had made at Elba (from which he had escaped). Saint Helena was chosen for its isolation: it was accessible only by ship, there were no nearby islands for relay, and the surrounding ocean was a near-perfect natural prison.

Napoleon was housed at Longwood House, a converted stable complex that he found cramped and damp. He complained extensively about the humidity, the governor Sir Hudson Lowe (whom he despised), and the limitations on his movement. He dictated his memoirs, carefully constructing the narrative of his career that would shape how subsequent generations understood him.

He died on May 5, 1821, at age 51. The official cause was stomach cancer. Controversies over whether he was poisoned with arsenic (traces were found in his hair when tested in later centuries) have never been definitively resolved.

His body remained on Saint Helena for 19 years. In 1840, the French government negotiated for the return of his remains, and he was reinterred in the Invalides in Paris, where he lies today. The tomb, a massive porphyry sarcophagus, was designed by architects who understood the difference between a person and a symbol.

The road to the world’s most remote place

For centuries, the only way to reach Saint Helena was by ship. The island sits on no modern shipping lane, having lost its significance as a waypoint after the Suez Canal opened in 1869 and redirected the Cape route traffic.

In 2016, Saint Helena gained an airport. The first commercial flight landed in October 2016. The runway required extraordinary engineering: it cuts into the hillside above a sheer cliff, with the approach requiring a descent through wind shear conditions that initially caused the runway to be declared unsafe for commercial jets for several months after opening.

Before the airport: the RMS St. Helena, a cargo and passenger ship, made the journey from Cape Town roughly every three weeks. The voyage took five to six days. This was the only way to arrive for anyone without their own yacht.

The airport has changed this. Saint Helena is no longer, strictly speaking, impossible to reach in a day’s travel. But it remains deeply remote.

For developers

Sources