Based on research undertaken by Colin Fox, we have published a detailed list of men serving in the St Helena Regiment in 1819 and 1827.  Not only does this provide the names, rank and ages of all these men, but also at their place of origin, former occupations, on which ship they arrived and which year, their place of embarkation and previous military employment. 

This information is restricted to members of the Society who should log into the members-only section of our web site with their user name and password. Please email the Membership Secretary if you have lost your password.

As previously advised (26 October 2012), Friends of St Helena plan to publish the book "St Helena Britannica" at their AGM at Oxford on 8 June 2013. Further details are now available. The book will comprise 30 chapters (one more than previously advised), and the total contents will be as follows:

Editor’s Preface
About the Author (By the Author)
Introduction
Chapter  1 - The Age of Discovery and St Helena’s ‘Man in the Moon’
Chapter  2 - The Troubles of a 17th Century Surgeon: Francis Moore of St Helena 
Chapter  3 - St Helena’s Forgotten Frenchmen: The Huguenot Wine Project
Chapter  4 - A Fortress Image: The Lambert-Scott Portrait and its Plagiarists
Chapter  5 - East Indiamen via St Helena
Chapter  6 - St Helena’s Pioneer Telegraph System
Chapter  7 - The Southern Whale Fishery: St Helena Rendezvous, 1780-1930
Chapter  8 - How Secure was St Helena in 1815?
Chapter  9 - Sir Hudson’s Headache: The Governor, The Admiral, and Supplies for St Helena
Chapter 10 - ‘Derby Days’ at Deadwood: Highlights of Horse Racing at St Helena
Chapter 11 - A Curious Coincidence?: Catherine Younghusband and the Obins Memorial
Chapter 12 - Saving Napoleon’s Soul at St Helena: “What Happened at Mason’s Stock House”
Chapter 13 - Saul Solomon of St Helena, 1776-1852
Chapter 14 - Richard Prince/Samuel Hopewell & Co., St Helena Merchants
Chapter 15 - Darwin’s Island
Chapter 16 - St Helena’s Social Revolution, 1834-1869: The Evidence of the Brooke-Scott Letters
Chapter 17 - The Melliss Family and the Oakbank Letters
Chapter 18 - Consuls and Consular Agents at St Helena
Chapter 19 - Longwood Observatory
Chapter 20 - Commodore Perry at St Helena in 1853
Chapter 21 - Baptists Pioneers of St Helena
Chapter 22 - St Paul’s Cathedral, St Helena: An Architectural Footnote
Chapter 23 - Some ‘Anglo-Indian’ and Other Memorials at St Helena
Chapter 24 - Insects and Origins
Chapter 25 - Forlorn Fortress
Chapter 26 - St Helena’s Pioneer Photographer: John Isaac Lilley
Chapter 27 - The Rise and Fall of James Francis Homagee, 1846-1919
Chapter 28 - When Penal Reform was on Trial at St Helena
Chapter 29 - St Helena as a Coaling Station: A Summary of Evidence
Chapter 30 - In Search of the St Helena Magazine
Trevor W. Hearl: A Select Bibliography
Index

As part of a wider project to increase the Society's Google ranking for online searches relating to St Helena, we are switching our web site address to www.sthelena.uk.net. We have actually been running our web pages from both addresses for several months now, but as from today anyone going to the old www.fosh.org.uk address will automatically be redirected to the new www.sthelena.uk.net address.  Any member experiencing problems with this transfer should email the web site manager, Ian Bruce

This long awaited collection of papers on St Helena by the late Trevor W. Hearl (1924-2007) comprises an introduction and thirty chapters, as well as an editor’s preface and a select bibliography of Hearl’s writings on this South Atlantic island. These papers had previously been published only as typescript leaflets and in small specialist journals. The chapters cover aspects of St Helena’s history from its discovery to the 1950s, including sixteenth and seventeenth century visitors and surgeons, East India shipping, the island’s Huguenots and Baptists, telegraphs, the Napoleonic period, island merchants, horse racing, Darwin and other natural historians, church memorials, photography and publishing, as well as St Helena’s role as a whaling port and coaling station.

The book will be of relevance to anyone with an interest in St Helena and the East India Company, as well as to readers with a general interest in the history of the British Empire.

It will be published in hardback, comprise 375 pages, 170mm x 235mm, b/w illustrations in text and index. THE BOOK CAN BE ORDERED NOW at the pre-publication price of £20 post free. If you order by 31 December 2012, your name will be included in a list of subscribers in the book, if you so wish; please confirm with order. The published price will be £25 post free. Please Order from Ian Mathieson MILES APART, Barwood House, Grants Lane, Ramsbottom, Lancs BL0 9DB, UK. Tel +44(0)1706 826467, email imathieson2000@yahoo.co.uk 

The Executive Committee met on Friday 14 September where a number of decisions were made or confirmed:

1. The Annual General Meeting will be held at the Oxford University Club on Saturday 8 June.  Full details of that meeting will be published in early 2013.
2. It has been decided to hold the Annual Meeting in June to avoid clashing with the St Helena Association or Swindon Group’s activities on the Saturday of St Helena Day in May.
3. There have been several changes in Officers of the Society:
1. As announced on 16 June, Trevor Reynolds (18 Badgers Close, Woking, GU21 3JF) has replaced Ian Bruce as Membership Secretary. All subscription payments should in future be sent to Trevor.
2. Ian Bruce remains manager of the Society's web site.
3. Colin Fox (editor of Wirebird, 20 Ormond Road, Wantage, Oxfordshire. OX12 8EG) has replaced Vicky Beal as Treasurer.
4. In future the distribution of our two publications St Helena Connection and Wirebird will be sent out by the Society's Secretary, Brian Frederick.

The Committee are pleased to announce that Trevor Reynolds has volunteered to take over the role of Membership Secretary from Ian Bruce.  Trevor and Ian will work in tandem for the next few weeks with Trevor handling all new issues and Ian signing off a few residual projects.  Trevor's day job is as Registrar of Museum Collections for English Heritage in York.  He has also been membership Secretary for the Tolkien Society.

Ian will continue to act as Web Site Manager for the Society.

As announced on the 8th January, Ian Bruce has had to leave the Executive Committee for Friends of St Helena because of the deteriorating health of his wife. This took effect at the Committee meeting held on the 3rd March.

Since nobody has yet been found to take over Ian's roles as Membership Secretary and Website Manager, all enquiries relating to these subjects should temporally be sent directly to the Chairman, Pamela Ward-Pearce. It would be helpful if emails continue to be respectively addressed to the Membership Secretary, Web Site Manager or Chairman, although each of these email links will for the moment go to Pamela. This temporary arrangement will cease once volunteers are found.

Are you a Saint living overseas? If you would you like to find out about the many opportunities arising from the construction of an airport on St Helena, please take a few minutes to complete a short survey by clicking this link.

Friends of St Helena are very pleased to announce that Bob Russell, MP for Colchester, has been given a knighthood in the New Years Honours list for his work in the public service. Bob Russell has for many years championed the cause for St Helena in the House of Commons. Full details are given in a government press release.

The following decisions were taken by members of the Executive Committee:

1. A vote was taken to welcome Lisa Hopkins and John Pinfold onto the Committee as co-opted members.
2. The date for the next Annual General Meeting  has been provisionally set as Saturday the 19th May 2012.  Two possible venues are being explored.  Full details will be posted in due course.
3. The cover price of St Helena Connection will be increased from £2.50 to £3.00.  The Society posts copies of St Helena Connection to a number of people who are not full members and a decision was made to increase the fee for this as follows:  From £6 to £7.50 per annum for UK subscribers; from £10 to £12 for overseas subscribers.  The increases will take effect when these subscribers next make their annual payment in January 2012.
   
4. A decision was made to move the subscription system from a fixed year (start of June through to the end of May the following year) to a movable year.  For members this has the benefit that members will henceforth always enjoy a full 12-month subscription period.  This new policy is effective for all subscriptions paid after the 4th August 2011.
5. Members who are late in paying their subscription will be given two months leeway before their details are removed from the database.
   
6. It was agreed to significantly enhance the web site by the addition of new areas, each of which will be designed to provide new information about St Helena, Ascension and Tristan da Cunha.  The benefits of moving from the www.fosh.org.uk  to a domain name that better describes our interest will also be examined.
   

At the Annual General Meeting, held at Kenwood House, a vote was taken by members to raise the cost of annual subscriptions as follows:

• UK Members:  From £15 to £20.
• St Helena Members:  Unchanged at £10.
• All Other Overseas Members:  From £25 to £30.
• Life Members, wherever they live:  Unchanged at £300.
  

These increases will take immediate effect for all new members.  For existing members, the increase takes effect in a year's time, i.e. for the year commencing 1st June 2012.

The meeting heard presentations of the accounts (Vicky Beale), membership and web site (Ian Bruce), Wirebird (Colin Fox) and St Helena Connection (Ian Mathieson).  Following on from the presentation about the new web site, partially  aimed at boosting membership levels, a discussion ensued of other ways to achieve this end.

After the meeting, and subject to a confirmatory vote by the existing Committee, two new members were co-opted onto the Committee - Lisa Hopkins and John Pinfold. 

Friends of St Helena have launched their new web site.  This features a members-only section accessible by subscribers for the year starting 1st June 2011 after they enter their user name and password.  The launch was announced several weeks ahead of schedule so as to allow members the opportunity to examine it before discussions at the AGM at Kenwood House on the 21st May.

Several sections of the site are still being developed, including the introduction of a new Paypal payment facility, slightly delayed as a result of some technical issues.  

1. To recommend at the next AGM that the membership subscription fee for all members other than those living at St Helena be increased by £5 from the start of our new year on the 1st June 2011.  This increase would be affective immediately for new members, existing members only paying an increased fee from the 1st June 2012.
2. To drop the existing £25 joint UK membership category (two members at the same address).   Only one person in a household now needs to be a member for their partner to attend our meetings.
3. As an additional step towards simplifying the membership subscription structure, the long-standing practice of sending our magazines to recipients who are not full members will be reviewed.
4. With the aim of improving efficiencies, that the Membership Secretary will in future maintain the membership database and receive all payments.
5. Because the Membership Secretary controls the database, that official should also undertake all postal distribution of magazines or communications to members.
   
6. To launch a new web site with an updated presentation, a members-only area, an automated Paypal payment facility and a centralised membership database.
   

High Knoll is currently closed after two sections of wall collapsed and the appeal aims to raise funds to get the much-loved fort restored and open full-time for islanders and visitors. National Trust Director Jamie Roberts hopes that the Friends donation will inspire others to support the appeal. “With no local Government resources available for built heritage we have to attract funding from overseas. The Friends of St Helena have set a wonderful example which we hope others who love St Helena and its heritage will follow.”

Vice Chairman Edward Baldwin says “High Knoll Fort is the largest and most visible of St Helena’s endangered buildings. If together we can raise the funds to repair it, that will bode well for the future of other equally important but less visible structures. The preservation of St Helena’s historic houses and military buildings is vital for the economic future of the Island.”