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Rough weather can delay ferries and mailboats, leaving residents stuck for days.

Others are blue-collar communities whose lifeblood depends on fishing, farming and the groceries and fuel delivered by a weekly mailboat that is nowhere to be seen.

Until an airport opened in 2017, the only way to reach St Helena, home to 4,500 islanders, was by sea, involving a five-night voyage on the mailboat from Cape Town.

Austin thanked him profusely, and felt a good deal easier when he and the mailboat's doctor, who arrived presently and gave him good advice, went away.

Elsie went round by Marseilles, saw the Seraph on board a P. and O. mailboat bound for Bombay and came overland to Rimini.