page_title: Weddell Island
section_title: Discovery
hierarchical_section_title: Weddell Island / History / Discovery
caption_attribution_description: Chart by John MacBride from his 1766 hydrographic survey of the Falkland Islands, published in 1773 by John Hawkesworth and John Byron.
context_page_description: Weddell Island is one of the Falkland Islands in the South Atlantic, lying off the southwest extremity of West Falkland. It is situated 1,545 km west-northwest of South Georgia Island, 1,165 km north of Livingston Island, 606 km northeast of Cape Horn, 358 km northeast of Isla de los Estados, and 510 km east of the Atlantic entrance to Magellan Strait.
  With an area of 265.8 km² 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 if expensive flight from the Falklands capital, Stanley.
context_section_description: 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. His temperature records for the area were more agreeable though. In January and February the thermometer rose to 59 °F (15 °C), but no higher; in August, it once fell to 20 °F (−7 °C), but was seldom lower than 32 °F (0 °C). As a result of that survey Weddell Island appeared on MacBride's chart of the Falklands, one of the most accurate for its time. 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.
  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 1769 (April 1768 according to other sources). 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 Joseph after his own name saint, which name was subsequently applied to the island itself and Hispanicized to Isla San José. 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.
caption: MacBride's chart featuring Weddell Island (nameless); the ship track depicted is that of HMS Jason in 1766[14]
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