MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

The King to be who visited the Falkland Islands in 1881

Arthur Felton (centre) with W A Ellision RNR (left) - Chief Officer of the RRS William Scoresby - and E R Gunther (right) - photographed in March 1932 by Carl Skottsberg

The website of the Dictionary of Falklands Biography has just added its 1500th illustration – an engagement photograph of Prince Albert Victor who visited Stanley in 1881.

Pictured with his fiancée, Princess Mary of Teck. The Prince, who could best be described as ‘challenged’, died shortly after the picture was taken and the Princess married his younger brother George, later King George V.

Her grand full length portrait as Queen Mary graced the drawing room in Government House, until it was removed to the Museum in Stanley.

Each of the illustrations in the DFB website has a story attached: the printed volume had only 365 pictures, but the website is capable of almost unlimited expansion and determined research by Dr Stephen Palmer has unearthed over 1100 new portraits, views of houses and ships and landscapes.

He has been helped by Tansy Bishop at the Jane Cameron National Archive, Teena Ormond at the Dockyard Museum and numerous other amateur historians in the Islands. As well as sources in Stanley, material has come from the Royal Archives and the National Portrait Gallery in London. Stephen is particularly pleased with a photo of the naturalist Arthur Felton (of West Point), by the Swedish botanist Carl Skottsberg, which was discovered by Joan Spruce.

He also points to a new link with film of the ketch Ilen, designed by Conor O’Brien for the Falkland Islands Company in 1926 which is now restored and seen sailing off Ireland.

The website, which was designed by Dr Tom McAdam, received 3,380 hits in 2019 and has already had 8,400 so far this year. During last August, 964 people visited the site for the first time, from 68 different countries. Most come from the UK (568) with a large number from the USA. For the first time it has been possible to separate hits from the Islands from the British total.

The Falklands score a respectable 69 - not bad from a population of about 3,000. There have been 105 enquiries from Argentina, often from people of British ancestry looking up their families on the Islands.

Commenting on the 1500 pictures, the editor of the DFB, David Tatham said: “It is really good news that so many people are consulting the DFB website for an accurate account of Falklands history and that so many others are contributing new material to it.

We are building an essential resource for the study of the history of the Islands and one capable of continuous enlargement.” www.falklandsbiographies.org