SCARY BOAT RIDE at ST HELENA ISLAND
November 14, 2025 · 23 min · 68K views · St Helena Island
Tall ship sails at sunset near St Helena Island
What this video covers
Barry Perrins aboard White Shadow anchors at St Helena, one of the South Atlantic's most remote islands, and documents the mandatory shore-boat ferry system at Jamestown — private dinghies are prohibited due to rough sea conditions.▶ 0:00 The ferry, operated by a boatman named Colin, requires passengers to grip a rope frame to swing aboard; on the last run of the day, rough swells forced the boat to stand off in deep water before circling back to collect stragglers.▶ 1:53 Perrins also wheels a failed refrigerator through Jamestown to the island's sole repair technician, who declares it terminal — warm beer from that point on.▶ 4:50 The genealogical thread running through the episode traces his seven-times-great-grandfather Matthew Bassett, who arrived on St Helena in 1684 as an East India Company soldier and later married Bridget Coles of Pleasant Valley; Perrins spends a full day in the island's archive tracing property records.▶ 7:22 Ashore, he explores High Knoll Fort (begun 1799), the crumbling and unsecured Munden's Battery (circa 1700), and finds a Joshua Slocum monument outside the building — now a radio station — where Slocum spoke in 1898.▶ 12:40 A neighboring yacht in the anchorage lost a starboard lower spreader on passage and moves to calmer water fearing mast failure in the swell.▶ 11:02
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