History of The Falkland Islands - European Discovery

European Discovery

An archipelago in the region of the Falkland Islands appeared on Portuguese maps from the early 16th century. However, it is unlikely that they were sighted by Ferdinand Magellan or Estêvão Gomes of the San Antonio, one of the captains in the expedition of Magellan. None of the chroniclers aboard mentions any such discovery. All say that the San Antonio returned to Spain up the coast of South America, and there is no positive evidence to support the discovery of the Falklands.

Though definite proof is lacking, there is evidence that the islands were first discovered by an unrecorded Portuguese expedition before Magellan set sail. The evidence is found in two early maps, one made by the Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel in about 1522, the very first map to show the Falklands, the other a French copy of a Portuguese map bought in Lisbon by André Thévet (1516-1590), a Franciscan friar and prolific writer on many subjects; this copy is now in the manuscript of a large unpublished work by Thevet in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. These two maps of Portuguese origin suggest that it was Portuguese navigators who first saw and mapped the Falklands. It is not unusual that no written record of their expedition survives; voyages of discovery in those days were often national or commercial secrets, and unless a journal survived, they are completely unknown today.

When English explorer John Davis, commander of the Desire, one of the ships belonging to Thomas Cavendish's second expedition to the New World, separated from Cavendish off the coast of what is now southern Argentina, he decided to make for the Strait of Magellan in order to find Cavendish. On 9 August 1592 a severe storm battered his ship, and Davis drifted under bare masts, taking refuge "among certain Isles never before discovered." Consequently, for a time the Falklands were known as "Davis Land" or "Davis' Land."

In 1594, they were visited by English commander Richard Hawkins, who, combining his own name with that of Queen Elizabeth I, the "Virgin Queen", gave the islands the name of "Hawkins' Maidenland."

In 1600, Sebald de Weert, a Dutchman, visited them and called them the Sebald Islands (in Spanish, "Islas Sebaldinas" or "Sebaldes"), a name which they bore on some Dutch maps into the 19th century.

English Captain John Strong, commander of the Welfare, sailed between the two principal islands in 1690 and called the passage "Falkland Channel" (now Falkland Sound), after Anthony Cary, 5th Viscount Falkland (1659–1694), who as Commissioner of the Admiralty had financed the expedition and later became First Lord of the Admiralty. From this body of water the island group later took its collective name.