SECTION III. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS AND SOUTH GEORGIA. THE FALKLAND ISLANDS. The III. As the discovery of the West Indies resulted from an SECTION attempt to find a new way to the East, so, to compare small things with great, the discovery of the Falkland Islands at the extreme south of America was the result of a voyage Discovery intended to solve the problem of a North-West passage of the Falkland from Europe to Asia round the ice-bound coast of North Islands. America. John Davis1 the Arctic explorer, one of the many great Devonshire seamen, cotemporary, friend, and neighbour of Ralegh, had in the years 1585-1587 paid three visits to the desolate Northern Ocean and had left his name to be borne by the strait between Greenland and the American continent. His object was to find a practicable route to Asia, and in 1591 he determined to attempt the passage from the opposite side, sailing through the Straits of Magellan and coming up along the Pacific coast. He joined forces with Thomas Cavendish, renowned for having repeated Drake's exploit of sailing round the world, but the two captains, one an explorer the other a freebooter, were ill-assorted, they parted company on the coast of Patagonia, the expedition was a failure and ended in the Straits of Magellan, and its chief result in the way of geographical discovery was that on the fourteenth of August, 1592, Davis was driven in among certain ་ 1 See Mr. Clements Markham's Life of John Davis in the World's Great Explorers' Series' [1889]. IIL SECTION isles, 'never before discovered by any known relation, lying fifty leagues or better from the shore east and northerly from the Straits'. These isles, of which he was only too glad to keep clear, were the Falkland Islands. Two years later, in 1594, the islands were skirted by Richard Hawkins, who tried to do honour at once to his Queen and to himself by naming them Hawkins' Maiden Land. In 1598-1600 they were sighted by the Dutch sailor Sebald de Veert and were called after him Sebald's Islands or the Sebaldines; and it was not till after 1690 that the name Falkland Islands came into existence. Attempts at settle ment in the group in the eighteenth century. In that year Captain Strong visited the group and gave the name of Falkland Channel to the strait between the two main islands, the name being subsequently applied to the islands themselves. At Christmas time in the year 1708 Woodes Rogers and Dampier came within sight of ‘Falkland's Land,' but it was not till the middle of the eighteenth century that any notice was taken of this distant, desolate archipelago; up to that date, only a very few adventurous sailors came and looked on the islands and passed by on the other side. 2 The narrative of Lord Anson's voyage round the world, which was published in 1748, called attention to the want of a station and friendly place of call for British ships in the South Atlantic, and suggested that possibly the Falkland Islands would be a suitable place for such a station, in view of its position with regard to the coasts of Spanish America. The British Government accordingly prepared to send out an expedition to explore and report upon these islands, but desisted owing to remonstrances from the Spanish authorities, who naturally objected to the English obtaining a foothold anywhere near their South American possessions. Nothing more was done until the peace of 1763 set the fighting 1 From the account of The last Voyage of M. Th. Candish [Hakluyt]. 2 In 1740-4. III. powers of Europe for awhile free to push their way into the SECTION dark corners of the world. The French especially, having lost Canada, were looking abroad for fresh lands to conquer and to colonise, and hoped to find them in the Southern Seas; and Bougainville, their greatest explorer, undertook to plant a colony in the Falkland Islands. The settlers, including some Acadian families, landed early in 1764, and established themselves at Port Louis at the head of Berkeley Sound on the eastern side of East Falkland. The colony however lasted only for a very short time, for the jealousy of the Spaniards was again aroused, and in 1766 Port Louis was given over to them in return for a sum of money paid to Bougainville by way of compensation, and was rechristened for a while Port Solidad. The French occupation, brief as it was, left its mark on the islands. Bougainville's company set out from the port of St. Malo, and, though the Falklands are said to have derived their alternative name of 'Iles Malouines,' or in Spanish guise Malvinas,' from earlier visits by St. Malo vessels at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it may well be supposed that the fact of their being actually colonised from the Breton port did much to perpetuate the name. Further, the herds of wild cattle and horses, which till lately were so numerous in East Falkland, were said to have been in great measure the descendants of the stock introduced by the French settlers. Very shortly after the French had taken possession of East Falkland, the English planted themselves in the western island. Captain Byron was sent out by the government in 1764, and in January, 1765, he arrived at an inlet on the west coast of that island, which he named Egmont Harbour, after the Earl of Egmont, First Lord of the Admiralty. 'Of this harbour, and all the adjoining islands,' he says, 'I took possession for His Majesty King George the Third of Great Britain under the name of Falkland's Island". At the 1 See the account given in Hawkesworth's Voyages, vol. i. III. SECTION beginning of the following year a blockhouse was built at Port Egmont and a small garrison placed there, and for a short time the two European settlements in East and West Falkland existed side by side. The Spaniards however were ill at ease at the prospect of another European nation establishing itself in these seas, and finally the Governor of Buenos Ayres sent a force, which in June, 1770, compelled the English to evacuate their settlement. This high-handed proceeding led to strong remonstrance on the part of the British government, with the result that in January, 1771, the King of Spain agreed to restore Port Egmont on condition that the restitution should not affect the question of the prior right of sovereignty of the Malouins, otherwise called Falkland's Islands.' This agreement was accepted by Lord North and his colleagues as sufficient satisfaction for the injury which had been committed, but the action of the government was strongly attacked both in and out of Parliament, mainly on the ground that the sovereignty of the islands had been left an open question. Junius wrote in condemnation of the Ministry, and was answered by Johnson in his pamphlet 'Thoughts on the late Transactions respecting Falkland's Islands;' while Chatham proposed to submit to judicial opinion the awkward query, 'Whether, in consideration of law, the Imperial Crown of this realm can hold any territories or possessions thereunto belonging otherwise than in sovereignty?' It was a case in which war between two great countries might easily have arisen from a wholly inadequate cause; but, when the government had secured a parliamentary majority in favour of their policy, the matter was allowed to drop; and shortly afterwards, in May, 1774, the English abandoned their station at Port Egmont after putting up a plate inscribed with a formal declaration that the islands belonged to Great Britain. From this date the group appear to have remained for nearly fifty years without being formally occupied, though III. Occupation by Great the Spaniards are said to have made use of one of the islands SECTION as a convict station. At length, in 1820, the Republican Government of Buenos Ayres took possession of them, and in 1826 gave a grant of East Falkland to Don Louis Vernet, of the islands by who established himself on the scene of the old French and the GovernSpanish settlement at Port Louis. In 1831 Vernet seized ment of Buenos three American sailing vessels, and in reprisal the United Ayres. States Government at the end of the year sent a small force and destroyed the settlement. This action and, as is stated, the rumour that the Americans contemplated taking possession of the Falklands for the protection of their trade, induced the British Government to revive their sleeping claims. Accordingly, in pursuance of instructions from the Admiralty, Final one of the ships on the South American station reached Port occupation Egmont on the twentieth of December, 1832; the British Britain. flag was hoisted, the fort was repaired, and an inscription was set up in the following words: 'Visited by H.B.M. sloop Clio, for the purpose of exercising the right of sovereignty over these islands, 23rd December, 1832.' Passing on to East Falkland, the captain of the Clio found at Port Solidad a small detachment of soldiers from Buenos Ayres, who, in spite of the destruction of Vernet's settlement, had been again sent there in the previous October to re-assert the rights of the Republic. He at once called upon their commander to surrender the post as being in a port belonging to Great Britain; the demand was complied with, and, in spite of strong protests on the part of the Government of Buenos Ayres, the British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands was once for all asserted and maintained. For some years the dependency continued in charge of the Admiralty, but in 1843 a civil government was established1, and the islands 1 See Correspondence respecting the Colonisation of Falkland Islands, laid before the House of Commons in 1841. These papers show that one reason for which the establishment of a regular colony in the islands was pressed on the government was the advantages which they were supposed to offer for the formation of a penal settlement. |