a landing party ashore on 2 February 1777 and hoisted the Imperial flag, naming it and its neighboring islets the Isles de Brabant. However, no settlement or facilities were ever set up there by the company. After the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War halted penal transportation to the Thirteen Colonies, British prisons started to overcrowd. As several stopgap measures proved to be ineffective, the British Government announced in December 1785 that it would proceed with the settlement of New South Wales. In September 1786 Alexander Dalrymple, presumably goaded by Bolts's actions, published a pamphlet with an alternative proposal of his own for settlements on Tristan da Cunha, St. Paul and Amsterdam islands in the Southern Ocean. Captain John Blankett, R.N., also suggested independently to his superiors in August 1786 that convicts be used to establish a British settlement on Tristan. In consequence, the Admiralty received orders from the government in October 1789 to examine the island as part of a general survey of the South Atlantic and the coasts of southern Africa. That did not happen, but an investigation of Tristan, Amsterdam and St. Paul was undertaken in December 1792 and January 1793 by George Macartney, Britain's first ambassador to China. During his voyage to China, he established that none of the islands were suitable for settlement. 19th century The first permanent settler was Jonathan Lambert of Salem, Massachusetts, United States, who moved to the island in December 1810 with two other men, to be joined later by a fourth. Lambert publicly declared the islands his property and named them the Islands of Refreshment. Three of the four men died in 1812 and Thomas Currie (Tommaso Corri, from Livorno, Italy), one of the original three, remained as a farmer on the island. On 14 August 1816, the United Kingdom annexed the islands by sending a garrison to secure possession, and making them a dependency of the Cape Colony in South Africa. This was explained as a measure to prevent the islands' use as a base for any attempt to free Napoleon Bonaparte from his prison on Saint Helena. The occupation also prevented the United States from using Tristan da Cunha as a base for naval cruisers, as it had during the War of 1812. The garrison left the islands in November 1817, although some members of the garrison, notably William Glass, stayed and formed the nucleus of a permanent