Reassertion of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (1833) Reassertion of British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (1833) In December 1832, two naval vessels were sent by the United Kingdom to re-assert British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands (), after the United Provinces of the River Plate (part of which later became Argentina) ignored British diplomatic protests over the appointment of Luis Vernet as governor of the Falkland Islands and a dispute over fishing rights. In 1765, Captain John Byron explored Saunders Island, which lies 1.5 miles (2.5 km) off the coast of West Falkland. He named the harbour Port Egmont, and claimed this and other islands for Britain,
History of the Falkland Islands the Ice Age, the Falkland Islands may have been joined to the mainland of South America. While Amerindians from Patagonia could have visited the Falklands, The presence of the warrah, "Dusicyon australis", has often been cited as evidence of pre-European occupation of the islands. However, in 2009, this hypothesis was disproved when DNA analysis identified the Falkland Island wolf's closest living relative as the maned wolf ("Chrysocyon brachyurus") – an unusually long-legged, fox-like South American canid, from which it separated about 6.7 million years ago. It would seem that the lineages of the maned wolf and the Falkland Islands wolf