Stanley

A number of variants of the city's name have appeared in both English and Spanish. Stanley Harbour was originally known as "Port Jackson", and this name would have applied to the area before the town was built. Although the town is officially known as "Stanley", it is frequently referred to as "Port Stanley", especially in British reports about the Falklands War. This is in line with various other settlements around the islands, e.g. Port Howard and Port Stephens. However, "Stanley" without the "Port" prefix was established long before the war, and on 2 August 1956, the Officer Administering the Government of the Falkland Islands reported to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London as follows: There is some difficulty over the correct name of the capital. Early despatches contain reference to both Port Stanley and Stanley. …

The original capital of the islands was at Port Louis to the north of the present site of Stanley, on Berkeley Sound. Captains Francis Crozier and James Clark Ross were recruited by Governor Richard Moody in his quest to find a new capital for The Falklands. Both Crozier and Ross (who are remembered in Crozier Place and Ross Road in Stanley) were among the Royal Navy's most distinguished seafarers. They spent five months in the islands with their ships Terror and Erebus, later lost looking for the Northwest Passage. Governor Moody (after whom Moody Brook is named), however, decided to move the capital to Port Jackson, which was renamed "Stanley Harbour", after a survey. Stanley Harbour was considered to have a deeper anchorage for visiting ships. …

The climate of Stanley is classified as a subpolar oceanic climate (Köppen Cfc), bordering very closely on a polar climate (ET). Nowadays it barely avoids classification as ET because the mean temperature is greater than 10 °C (50 °F) for two months of the year. Unlike typical tundra climates, however, the winters are very mild, and vegetation grows there that normally could not in a climate this close to a polar climate. Contrast this with Churchill, Manitoba, which also has a near-tundra climate but is much more continental in nature. The Falkland Islands have displayed a warming trend in recent years; the mean daily January maximum for Mount Pleasant for the years 1999-2012 is 15.1 °C (59.2 °F) compared to Stanley's 1961-90 average of 14.1 °C (57.4 °F). …