Qualla: Saunders Island

Saunders Island: Introduction

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ben Tubby, CC BY 2.0. Four people live on Saunders Island in winter. In summer the number rises to five. That is the entire human population of an island that holds tens of thousands of seabirds and once held the first British settlement anywhere in the Falklands. The arithmetic of the place tells you almost everything: a vast, wind-raked landscape, a single family running sheep across it, and a wildlife spectacle at the western end so concentrated that cruise ships now reroute themselves to spend an afternoon there.

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Image: Ben Tubby | CC BY 2.0

Saunders Island: The Neck

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liam Quinn from Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. The wildlife gathers at a place simply called "The Neck," a low isthmus of sand and grass at the western end of the island where the wind funnels and the animals throng. Here a huge colony of black-browed albatrosses nests within sight of rockhopper and gentoo penguins, with Mage...

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Image: Liam Quinn from Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Saunders Island: Where Britain Began Here

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Liam Quinn from Canada, CC BY-SA 2.0. In January 1765 Commodore John Byron, grandfather of the poet, sailed his squadron into a bay on the coast of Saunders Island and named it Port Egmont, after the First Lord of the Admiralty. He claimed the harbour, and indeed all the surrounding islands, for King George III, unaw...

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Image: Liam Quinn from Canada | CC BY-SA 2.0

Saunders Island: The Flag That Would Not Stay Down

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit edited by M.Minderhoud, Public domain. Port Egmont did not stay British for long the first time. In June 1770 a Spanish fleet of five ships and 1,400 soldiers forced the small garrison here to surrender, a bloodless humiliation that nearly pitched Britain, Spain and France into open war before Spain backed down and ha...

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Image: edited by M.Minderhoud | Public domain

Saunders Island: A Farm at the End of the World

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España, CC BY 2.0. Today Saunders is, first and last, a working sheep farm, run by the Pole-Evans family from the single settlement on the eastern shore. Everything here is self-catering; visitors buy eggs and bread at the settlement and cook for themselves in simple lodgings, some of them set out ...

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Image: Fondo Antiguo de la Biblioteca de la Universidad de Sevilla from Sevilla, España | CC BY 2.0