Heligoland Read Free Page B

and disinterested. As a consequence there were often lengthy phases when the Heligolanders were left alone, and so virtually governed themselves. In a sense King Canute the Great of Denmark increased the island’s constitutional promiscuity. By virtue of his becoming King of England in 1017, Heligoland came within the ambit of the English Crown for the period of his reign, which ended in 1036. In so far as there were subsequent links they were occasional, almost entirely of a commercial nature, and took the form of trips made by small merchant ships between the island and London’s Billingsgate Market. In Britain it was only such traders who knew of the existence of Heligoland, together with a few mariners who had sought shelter there in bad weather or had perhaps transhipped some cargo in its waters. This remained the situation for centuries. In 1553 Richard Chancellor, the pilot-general of the exploration vessel Bonaventure , en route via Russia to search for a north-east passage to India, noted its existence in his journal – but he only happened to catch sight of it from a distance when his ship was blown off course by a storm. In Napoleonic times there was great need for a wider knowledge of Heligoland but no one had ever bothered to write down – in any language – any sort of history or pilotage notes.
    Another beguiling feature of Heligoland’s capriciousness was its ever-changing geographical appearance. By Napoleonic times it had changed dramatically from just a few centuries earlier. About the year 800 it had become home to a civilisation as advanced as any in northern Europe, with several villages scattered over the island. Then covering some 24 sq. miles, it was wooded and fairly low-lying. In the south-west corner there was a huge mound, above which there towered two adjoining promontories, one of red stone and the other of white. Radiating outwards from the centre of the island were ten rivers. At the sources of the northernmost of those rivers were temples that had earlier been used for worshipping Tosla, Mars, Jupiter and Venus; in the south could be found a monastery and five churches. In inlets around the coastline were six anchorages, the three most important of which were on the leeward side of the island protected by three castles. But according to a map of Heligoland produced by the cartographer Johannes Mejerg in 1649, the gnawing away of the coastline by wave erosion and storms had been so voracious that by the year 1300 the sea had devoured all but 4 square miles of the hilly south-west corner of the island. All that remained at its fringes were the monastery, a church and the castle. By 1649 these too had vanished, leaving just an ‘H’-shaped island, half red and half white, from which extended sandy reefs shaped like giant lobster claws. 5 And thus it stood until New Year’s Eve 1720. That night there was an epic storm, and the sea surged through, permanently severing the narrow gypsum isthmus that had hitherto joined the western and eastern rocks. From then on Heligoland consisted of two distinct geographical sections, the main part of which was sometimes called Rock Island. Its low-lying dependency, just a few hundred yards to the east, was termed Sandy Island.
    The final element in Heligoland’s air of capriciousness was derived from the indefinability of its sovereignty. In 1714 Heligoland notionally became a possession of the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein, who were Kings of Denmark. Danish rule was fairly remote and the Heligolanders were allowed the freedom to govern their own island as they thought best. Indeed in practical terms the ties that bound Heligoland, Denmark and Schleswig were slight. The island became a de facto No-Man’s-Land, free to all, and afforded a welcome refuge for the people of other islands who were hounded by Danish tax-gatherers. The people made what they could by privateering, fishing and pilotage. Yet in Britain nothing was even known of the form of