For the journey to St. Helena, Napoleon was transferred to Admiral Cockburn's ship, the _Northumberland_. The suite numbered thirty, and was chosen by Napoleon himself. Its members were Bertrand, Montholon, and Las Cases, with their families, together with Gourgaud and, following in a later ship, a Pole of doubtful duty and dubious personality, the self-styled Colonel Piontkowski. There were sixteen servants, of whom twelve were Napoleon's. The voyage was tedious and uneventful. The admiral adhered to English customs, and discarded the etiquette observed toward crowned heads; but he remained on the best of terms with his illustrious prisoner. There were occasional misunderstandings, and sometimes ill-natured gossip, in which the admiral was denounced behind his back as a "shark"; but such little gusts of temper passed without permanent consequences. Napoleon had secured the excellent library he desired, and every day read or wrote during most of the morning; the evenings he devoted to games of hazard for low stakes, or to chess, which he played very badly. He was careful as to his diet, took abundant regular exercise, and, since his health was excellent, he appeared in the main cheerful and resigned.
The island of St. Helena is the craggy summit of an ancient volcano, rising two thousand seven hundred feet above the sea, and contains forty-five square miles. Its shores are precipitous, but it has an excellent harbor, that of Jamestown, which was then a port of call on the voyage from England, by the Cape of Good Hope, to India. It lies four thousand miles from London, one thousand one hundred and forty from the coast of Africa, one thousand one hundred and eighty from the nearest point in South America. There were a few thousand inhabitants of mixed race, and the tropical climate, though moist and enervating, is fairly salubrious. Under the act passed by Parliament, England increased the territorial waters around the island to a ring three times the usual size, and policed them by "hovering" vessels, which made the approach of suspicious craft virtually impossible. This, with numerous other precautionary measures of minor importance, made St. Helena an impenetrable jail. It was October sixteenth, 1815, when Napoleon landed on its shores.