RMS St Helena & South Africa

By Gillian Page

This is an account of our travels on the last remaining Royal Mail Ship (excluding the QM2) which travelled from Weymouth,England to Cape Town, South Africa, via Ascension Island and St Helena, the island where Napoleon was imprisoned and died. This is a unique account of a journey that the Royal Mail Ship no longer makes.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Nov 9, 2011
• ISBN: 9781471683589

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RMS St Helena & South Africa

RMS St Helena and South Africa

RMS St Helena and South Africa: Gillian Page 2012

All Rights Reserved

First published 2012

ISBN  978-1-4716-8358-9

25TH MARCH - 8TH MAY 2006. This is a journal of our journey to South Africa, via St Helena, on the Royal Mail Ship St Helena. Fred’s father had worked at the GPO Telephones for over 45 years, and had always wanted to travel on one of the Royal Mail Ships.

When he died we decided to make the journey, as a tribute to him, with the money he left us.

RMS St Helena

She is one of only two ocean going ships to carry the venerable title of Royal Mail Ship, held in the past by so many famous British passenger liners.(The Queen Mary 2 is the other Royal Mail Ship.)

In addition to carrying passengers in well-fed comfort, she is a lifeline for residents on her island namesake as she carries all their goods and supplies to St Helena. From wind turbines to automotive parts, cars, sheep, goats and Christmas turkeys to furniture, food and paint, everything has to be carried by ship to the island. This is part of the fascination. RMS St Helena is not just a passenger vessel: it’s a working ship, plying the Atlantic Ocean, carrying goods and people nearly halfway around the world. When you sail on the RMS, you are following in the wake of generations of travellers and explorers who crossed the world’s oceans in the leisured days before air travel. A voyage on the RMS is an unforgettable experience: a blue water voyage on a working ship to unspoilt and remote islands.

The RMS St Helena was built in 1989 specifically to supply the island of St Helena, a British Overseas Territory deep in the tropical South Atlantic. She is British registered, 6,767 gross tonnes and has berths for a maximum of 128 passengers, plus 56 officers and crew.  She has modern facilities: stabilisers, air conditioning, and

For those who worry about being too detached from their normal humdrum existence, fax telephone and e-mail by satellite communication systems. She carries a doctor and has well equipped medical facilities. Classified as A1+ at Lloyds and sailing under the British flag means that the RMS St Helena is subject to some of the most rigorous safety regulations in the world. Her repeatedly high classification in the Berlitz Guide to Cruising and Cruise Ships is a sure indication of the high quality of her facilities, crew and standards.

Extract from the RMS St Helena Brochure

Part 1

This is the first part of our journey, We travel down to Weymouth by train from Norwich, and after an overnight stay in a small Guest House, and we travel on to Portland Bill to join the ship for the trip down to the Island of St Helena. St Helena is a small, remote volcanic island situated in the South Atlantic. There is no airport, or port, and the only link with the outside world is the small Royal Mail cargo ship, which carries a maximum of a hundred and twenty passengers.

Saturday March 25th, 2006

Today we travelled to Weymouth, to be ready to embark on the St Helena tomorrow. That sounds really easy, doesn’t it?

We left home at 8.30 in the morning and arrived at 5pm in the evening. We could have got to John O’Groats in that time - but we were only in fact travelling from Norwich to Dorset.

British Rail contrived to make our journey as difficult as possible. We set out with two huge cases on wheels, and three pieces of hand luggage. The first stage of our journey should have been the simplest - Norwich to Liverpool Street - less than 2 hours in all. However, engineering works meant we had to leave the train at Stowmarket and board coaches for Ipswich. There wasn’t enough room for everyone - Fred and I sat at each end of the coach, and others were standing. To add insult to injury, when we arrived at Ipswich the train was waiting to leave, and the guard, a woman named Sue, refused to let us walk the length of the train to board the coach we were booked in, and insisted we boarded in coach H. We had seats booked in coach C! There was no way we could manoeuvre 2 large cases on wheels and three sets of hand luggage through six carriages, all packed with people, to find the seats booked for us. Pleading with po-faced Sue brought back the retort that we were late and holding the train up! She was acting as if it was our fault! Several other couples were in the same situation as we were in, so instead of turning right into the melee of the hoi-polloi, we decided to turn left, and invade the relatively empty first class compartment. The journey to London was, from then on, smooth, quiet and quite relaxing. I could get used to travelling first class! When the ticket conductor came round we were the first of the rebellious couples he stopped at, and he seemed reluctant to argue with us- He stamped our tickets and moved on without charging us extra. He then faced the same story and outrage from several other couples. One thing I couldn’t understand though. A family of four - a girl of seven or so, and a baby of 2 months in a pram, were sitting opposite us. They had boarded First Class because there was no room in the second class carriages for their pram. They were dressed in their finery, on their way to a wedding in London. They had heard us all complaining about the situation, and saw us getting our tickets stamped with no surcharge, but they duly paid their surcharge, although they could have used ‘our story’ as well!

Once we arrived at Liverpool Street we were 20 minutes late, and had only 45 minutes to reach Paddington. We got a black cab, but only made it with 10 minutes to spare. The black cab driver was convinced we were on our way to Heathrow Airport because of the sheer amount of luggage we had with us, and the fact