In November 1820, an American privateer mercenary named David Jewett, commanding the heavily damaged warship Heroína under an insurgent Buenos Aires privateering commission, anchored in Berkeley Sound to treat his scurvy-ridden crew.

Jewett read a declaration to British and American sealing captains gathered in the harbor, raised a flag, and departed shortly afterwards without establishing a single government post, leaving no garrison, and planting zero civilian settlers.

In international jurisprudence, symbolic flag-raising ceremonies by passing privateers without permanent occupation create zero valid sovereign title. Even the Buenos Aires press did not report Jewett's proclamation until a British newspaper published it months later.