History
The farm was established in 1846 by John Markham Dean, an Englishman who bought Pebble and three neighbouring islands. Dean's family concern passed on to Dean Brothers Ltd, but it is currently managed locally by Raymond Evans, the great nephew of Johnny Evans who introduced sheep to the island and slaughtered the first feral cattle.
During the Falklands War, the island was occupied by Argentine forces which created the Estación Aeronaval Calderón (naval air station Calderon), protected by elements of 2nd Naval Infantry Battalion, which was assaulted successfully by the British SAS in the "Raid on Pebble Island". 300 Argentines were based here. HMS Coventry was sunk off the coast of Pebble Island. According to the inquiry into its loss, the ship sank "10 miles" north of Pebble Island in May 1982 The co-ordinates of the sinking are 51 03.6S, 59 42.2W and this is about 11.5 nautical miles (21.3 km; 13.2 mi) from the nearest point on Pebble Island. There are memorials on the island to the British destroyer HMS Coventry and to an Argentinian Lear Jet, both destroyed during the conflict.
More recently, Pebble Island Settlement became one of the first in the Falkland Islands to use wind turbines to generate most of its electricity.
Read more about this topic: Pebble Island
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“Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are added in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Carrie Chapman Catt (1859–1947)
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)