Weddell Island ()Weddell Island. Falkland Islands. GeoNames Geographical Database is one of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, lying off the southwest extremity of West Falkland. It is situated west-northwest of South Georgia Island, north of Livingston Island, northeast of Cape Horn, northeast of Isla de los Estados, and east of the Atlantic entrance to Magellan Strait.
With an area of Weddell is the third largest island in the archipelago after East Falkland and West Falkland, and one of the largest private islands in the world. It has only one inhabited location, Weddell Settlement, with a single digit population engaged in sheep farming and tourism services. The island offers walks to wildlife watching sites and scenery destinations including some spectacular landscapes featuring the famous Falklands stone runs. Weddell is both an Important Plant Area and a priority Key Biodiversity Area.
It is a remote place, infrequently visited by a resupply ship and occasionally by private yachts, accessible by air with a short (some ) if expensive flight from the Falklands capital, Stanley.
Etymology Until the mid-nineteenth centuryP.P. King and R. Fitzroy. The South America Pilot. Part II. From the Rio de la Plata to the Bay of Panama, including Magellan Strait, the Falkland, and Galapagos Islands. Fifth Edition. London: Printed for the Hydrographic Office, Admiralty, 1860. pp. 116–118R.M. Martin, J. & F. Tallis. The Falkland Islands and Patagonia. Scale 1:1200000 map. New York: J. & F. Tallis, 1851 Weddell Island was known as Swan Island,The Falkland Islands: Surveyed by Capt. Fitz Roy R.N. and the Officers of H.M. Ship Beagle, 1834. The Inner Bays from Port Harriet to the Eagle Passage are from the Surveys of Lt. Sulivan and W. Robinson R.N., 1838 & 1839. Scale ca. 1:404000 map. London: John Arrowsmith, 1841 (following p. 38) a name of unknown derivation recorded as early as 1785 by Capt. George Dixon, a seasoned mariner who had sailed under James Cook. Amused by this particular name and the Falklands place naming in general, he wrote: Though these islands are universally known by the name of Falkland’s, yet many of them are called by different names, just, I presume, as the fancy of different cruisers have suggested; I just mention this circumstance to prevent thy surprise, on seeing such names as Swan Island, Keppel’s Island &c &c. That former name is not to be confused with Swan Island in the Falkland Sound, on the other side of West Falkland.
Possibly, the island might have been named after a native bird, the Black-necked swan. The name appeared, applied to Weddell and/or Staats and Tea Islands, and translated as ‘Island(s) of Swans’ (Île(s) des Cygnes or Islas de los Cisnes) on some French and Spanish maps.F.A. Garnier. Patagonie, Detroit de Magellan, Terres Australes. Scale 1:6000000 map. Paris: Veuve Jules Renouard, 1862V.M. de Moussy. Patagonie, Terre de Feu, Malouines. Scale 1:3750000 map. Paris: Firmin Didot Freres, 1873M.F. Paz Soldan. Gobernacion de la Tierra del Fuego, Islas Malvinas. Scale 1:1800000 map.] Buenos Aires: Felix Lajouane, 1888
The present name of the island comes from James Weddell, a British sealer and explorer who visited the Falklands in 1819–1824, overwintered once in 1820, and then a second time in May–September 1823 ashore on the island at Quaker Harbour. Weddell's book A Voyage Towards the South Pole documented, inter alia, certain events and persons of local history, including his running across the privateer David Jewett and the former castaway Charles Barnard.J. Weddell. A Voyage Towards the South Pole, Performed in the Years 1822–24. Containing an Examination of the Antarctic Sea to the Seventy-Fourth Degree of Latitude. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orne, Brown and Green, 1825. p. 77 He is well known for his voyages to the Antarctic,A. Gurney. Below the Convergence: Voyages Toward Antarctica, 1699–1839. New York: Penguin Books, 1998. 336 pp. and the Weddell seal and the geographic features Weddell Point and Weddell Glacier on South Georgia, and Weddell Sea (discovered by him in February 1823), Weddell Plain, Weddell Arm, Weddell Islands (name given by Weddell himselfLaurie Island. BAT Gazetteer. UK Antarctic Place-names Commission, 2018) and Weddell Lake in Antarctica are all named in association with him.Antarctic geographic features named in association with James Weddell. SCAR Composite Gazetteer of Antarctica
History Discovery
The island was discovered in 1766 by the British navigator and accomplished military commander John MacBride during the first hydrographic survey of the Falklands archipelago carried out by his ship HMS Jason out of Port Egmont, the early British settlement situated on Saunders Island off the northwest coast of West Falkland. Of his new discoveries Capt. MacBride wrote unfavourably: We found a mass of islands and broken lands, beaten by storms almost perpetual.J. Purdy. Memoir, Descriptive and Explanatory, to Accompany the New Chart of the Ethiopic or Southern Atlantic Ocean, with the Western coasts of South-America, from Cape Horn to Panama. London: Richard Laurie, 1822. p. 35 (Swan Island appears on charts following pp. 32 and 34) His temperature records for the area were more agreeable though. In January and February the thermometer rose to , but no higher; in August, it once fell to , but was seldom lower than .J. MacBride. "Journal of the Winds and Weather and Degrees of Heat and Cold by the Thermometer, at Falkland Islands, from 1st February 1766 to 19th January 1767." In: A. Dalrymple. A Collection of Voyages, Chiefly in the Southern Atlantick Ocean. London, 1775. 198 pp. As a result of that survey Weddell Island appeared on MacBride's chart of the Falklands,J. MacBride. A chart of Hawkins’s Maidenland, discovered by Sr. Richard Hawkins in 1574 and Falkland Sound, so called by Capn. John Strong of the Farewell from London who sailed through it in 1689. Scale 1:1000000. In: An account of the voyages undertaken by the order of His present Majesty for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere. Eds. J. Hawkesworth and J. Byron. Vol. I. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1773 (following p. 40) one of the most accurate for its time.The Malaspina Expedition 1789–1794. The Journal of the Voyage by Alejandro Malaspina. Vol. I. Cadiz to Panama. Eds. A. David, F. Fernandez-Armesto, C. Novi and G. Williams. London: Hakluyt Society, 2001. 436 pp. (The Spanish navigator Alejandro Malaspina wrote in 1789: ... we found Captain MacBride’s chart very accurate, while the chart we acquired in Montevideo, even though recommended as the best one of this area, was most inaccurate, at least for this part of the coast.)R. Lorton. Falklands Wars – the History of the Falkland Islands with particular regard to Spanish and Argentine pretensions and taking some account of South Georgia, the South Sandwich Islands and Britain’s Antarctic territories. 2017. p. 115 Capt. James Cook, who surveyed and mapped South Georgia but did not visit the Falklands, based his 1777 chart of the islands on MacBride's one, inheriting some of its specific characteristics. For instance, both charts fail to show the secluded bay of Port Stephens, applying its name to present Port Albemarle instead.J. Cook. A Chart of the Southern Extremity of America 1775. Scale 1:3000000. London: W. Strahan and T. Cadell, 1777
Judging from contemporaneous mapping, the island was unknown to the French who established the first Falklands settlement, Port St. Louis in 1764.
The first Spanish sighting of Weddell Island was made by Miguel de Bernasani and Lieut. Francisco Orduña, from Port Stephens area, in the course of their overland trip across West Falkland in April 1769Plano de las Yslas Maluinas situadas en la latitude de 51 grados 28 minutos Sur y en 316 grados y 30 minutos, segun el Meridiano de Tenerife, su longitud. Escala ca. 1:500000. Real Escuela de Navegación de Cádiz, ca. 1770 (April 1768 according to other sourcesPlano de las Yslas Maluinas situadas en la latitud de 51 grados 28 minutos Sur, y en 316 grados 30 minutos de longitud según el meridiano de Tenerife. Escala 1:514.403 (Post 1769)). Following a survey of the island and its principal embayment Chatham Harbour carried out by Capt. Manuel Pando in the ship San Francisco de Paula in July 1770, Weddell appeared on the map made by the ship's pilot Joseph Puig (and widely copied by other Spanish cartographers) together with Beaver and New Islands, the group denoted as Yslas de San Miguel. Puig, a Catalan, named the large bay Puerto de San JosephJ.A. Puig. Plano de las Yslas Maluinas cituadas en el Mar del Sur. Escala ca. 1:500000. 1770 after his own name saint, which name was subsequently applied to the island itselfSpanish map of the Patagonian coast and the Falkland Islands. Late 18th century and Hispanicized to Isla San José.Patagonia oriental. Yslas de Falkland ò Malvinas. (Late 18th century map) Such naming practices were not uncommon at the time, indeed San Miguel was Bernasani's name saint, while Port St. Louis honoured the name saint of the French navigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville.
Early history The early inhabitants of the island were seal hunters. While some seal skins were taken from the Falklands by Bougainville in 1764,R. Greenhow. The Falkland Islands: A Memoire; Descriptive, Historical, and Political. Hunt’s Merchants’ and Commercial Review Magazine, 1842. Vol. VI.—No. II. pp. 105–151 a large scale sealing industry was only developed since the 1770s by American and British sealers who frequented Weddell and nearby islands in the process. The first to bring their sealing vessels to the Falklands were probably Capts. Gamaliel Collins, David Smith and Greenwood from New England in 1774.A.B. Dickinson. Seal Fisheries of the Falkland Islands and Dependencies: An Historical Review. Research in Maritime History No. 34. St. John’s, Newfoundland, 2007. 210 pp. Due to the nature of their trade, the sealers used to spend extensive periods of time ashore, and sometimes overwintered. So did Capt. Greenwood in his vessel King George at Port Egmont in 1774, and the British sealer United States under Capt. Benjamin Hussey in 1785 in Hussey Harbour – probably the estuary States Harbour on the southeast side of States Bay (current names States Cove and Chatham Harbour respectively).G. Dixon. A Voyage Round the World, But More Particularly to the North-west Coast of America: Performed in 1785–88 in the King George and Queen Charlotte, Captains Portlock and Dixon. London: Goulding, 1789. pp. 37, 40–41C. Barnard, J. Nicol, J. Knights, W. Mariner and J. Bartlett. The sea, the ship and the sailor. Tales of adventure from log books and original narratives. Salem, Massachusetts: Marine Research Society, 1925 (map following p. 14) On the local conditions for survival, American sealer Edmund Fanning reviewed the available sources of food and fuel to conclude in his memoirs: In fact, a person would be able to subsist at the Falkland Islands for a considerable length of time, without experiencing any great degree of suffering.E. Fanning. Voyages Round the World: With selected sketches of voyages to the South Seas, North and South Pacific Oceans, China, etc. New York: Collins & Hannay, 1833. pp. 93–94 (Fanning visited the Falklands as early as 1797, and was the mate of Charles Barnard's ship Nanina; Cape Fanning in Antarctica ia named after him) As a reminder of that period, many place names in the Weddell Island area honour sealers and sealing vessels, mostly American.