Grave of Matthew Brisbane

Falkland Islands (Islas Malvinas)


Vernet’s lieutenant Matthew Brisbane was murdered by gauchos after British naval officer JJ Onslow left him in charge of Port Louis in August 1833. In 1842 James Clark Ross dug up Brisbane’s body from the rough grave in which the Indians had buried it and reinterred it, giving it a wooden marker. That marker, now in the Falkland Islands Museum, was replaced in 1933 by a marble stone.

Brisbane, who twice survived being shipwrecked, was also the master of the Beaufoy, which accompanied James Weddell’s Jane on his furthest south of S 74°15´ in February 1823, when Weddell discovered his namesake sea.