Jun 27, 2026 · 31 min · 18 segments
After the release of The Pitcairn Trials, Luke received emails about another British Overseas Territory - St Helena. They told a shocking story of medical negligence, criminality and social divide…
Bernard McCabeGuest
Sandra McCabeGuestCatherineGuest
So certainly as we came in, we were thinking, wow, it's sort of, it looked like a moonscape and you thought there was no civilisation there.
And it's quite, I think it's a short runway, isn't it? Because I know they have problems with sometimes with the wind.
They have to allow a certain amount of time or fuel for them to fly back if they can't land because it's certain conditions and certain planes and certain pilots that can only land there.
Previously the only way on or off the island was catching the Royal Mail ship, the RMS St Helena.
Every three weeks or so it would arrive at the island having sailed for five days from Cape Town.
But in 2015, after many, many years of consultations, design, of shifting off big hunks of volcanic rock and shipping in concrete and steel and cranes and diggers and 300 million of Britain's finest pounds, they got a small but very smart-looking international airport, ready to connect the 4,000 people of St Helena with the 8 billion people everywhere else.
When the fresh and eye-wateringly expensive runway came to be tested in 2016, they realised that what with the runway running along the edge of a steep cliff and what with the Atlantic being windy, the wind would often hit the cliff roll up and over the side of the runway, therefore making it incredibly difficult to actually land a plane.
The first try, a British Airways test flight, took three goes before they managed to get the damn thing down.
As the UK's National Audit Office would later point out, Charles Darwin noted the strong winds in the late 19th century, so how is it a surprise to the authorities in the early 21st century? The commercial operator who was going to run flights pulled out.
And basically the expensive upshot is that planes can now land, but not big ones all the way from the UK.
And the planes that do come have to stop off just before finally heading out across the Atlantic to St Helena.
Because if they get there and finally can't land, which they often can't because of the wind...
they need enough fuel to turn around and get all the way back to the nearest mainland, Africa.
When Bernard and Sandra were successfully landing on St Helena, it was still that time when COVID was playing absolute hell with flights and travel.
And if you're St Helena, a small island of 4,000 people cut off from the world with plenty of old and vulnerable people who need protecting, COVID was a big worry.
We were getting off the plane and they were all in what I would describe as sort of the forensic suits that I would have...
So certainly as we came in, we were thinking, wow, it's sort of, it looked like a moonscape and you thought there was no civilisation there.
And it's quite, I think it's a short runway, isn't it? Because I know they have problems with sometimes with the wind.
They have to allow a certain amount of time or fuel for them to fly back if they can't land because it's certain conditions and certain planes and certain pilots that can only land there.
Previously the only way on or off the island was catching the Royal Mail ship, the RMS St Helena.
Every three weeks or so it would arrive at the island having sailed for five days from Cape Town.
But in 2015, after many, many years of consultations, design, of shifting off big hunks of volcanic rock and shipping in concrete and steel and cranes and diggers and 300 million of Britain's finest pounds, they got a small but very smart-looking international airport, ready to connect the 4,000 people of St Helena with the 8 billion people everywhere else.
When the fresh and eye-wateringly expensive runway came to be tested in 2016, they realised that what with the runway running along the edge of a steep cliff and what with the Atlantic being windy, the wind would often hit the cliff roll up and over the side of the runway, therefore making it incredibly difficult to actually land a plane.
The first try, a British Airways test flight, took three goes before they managed to get the damn thing down.
As the UK's National Audit Office would later point out, Charles Darwin noted the strong winds in the late 19th century, so how is it a surprise to the authorities in the early 21st century? The commercial operator who was going to run flights pulled out.
And basically the expensive upshot is that planes can now land, but not big ones all the way from the UK.
And the planes that do come have to stop off just before finally heading out across the Atlantic to St Helena.
Because if they get there and finally can't land, which they often can't because of the wind...
they need enough fuel to turn around and get all the way back to the nearest mainland, Africa.
When Bernard and Sandra were successfully landing on St Helena, it was still that time when COVID was playing absolute hell with flights and travel.
And if you're St Helena, a small island of 4,000 people cut off from the world with plenty of old and vulnerable people who need protecting, COVID was a big worry.
We were getting off the plane and they were all in what I would describe as sort of the forensic suits that I would have...
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