Stanley, capital and only city of the Falklands, began between 1843 and 1845 when Lieutenant Governor Moody, newly appointed and under orders to proceed to the Islands to carry out primary colonization, moved the seat of Government then at Port Louis (Anson) to the proposed new capital.

The Government section was established on the west end of the new town on the harbour edge and became known as the ‘Dockyard’. Early immigrants were temporarily housed in Dockyard Cottage. A base for a pier head was made by cleverly cutting down and stuffing with rubble the 615 ton Canadian barque Margaret who had struggled into Stanley leaking and damaged in August 1850 only to be condemned. This became known as the ‘Government Jetty’. Surrounded by an eight foot fence, by 1844 the Dockyard had a smithy built of sods, bricks and clay, a carpenter’s shop, a storehouse (later to be used as barracks), a hospital, a jail, workshops, and a few cottages, two wooden and one sods and stone.

The old dockyard was used by the Public Works Department, a blacksmith worked there and the storehouse that was the old jail and the hospital became part of the carpenter’s shop. The Government Central Store was one of the old storehouses. The Falkland’s Museum relocated to the Old Dockyard in September 2014 and it is a major tourist attraction.

Photograph: Stanley Dockyard today. Jean Sinclair

Sources include: Report on the Blue Book for 1889. The Falkland Islands, South America- The Reverend C McDonald Dobley. The Falkland Islands Journal, The Falkland Islands- Ian J Strange.