The United Kingdom mounted an invasion of the Falkland Islands on January 2, 1833, after the destruction of the Argentinian Puerto Soledad settlement by the American corvette Lexington (December 28, 1831) in response to the Argentinian governor Luis Vernet having seized U.S. fishing boats. This incident served the Foreign Office to reassert its sovereignty claim over the islands. The Argentinian Buenos Aires government commissioned Major Esteban Mestivier as the new Governor of the Islands, to set up a penal colony, but when he arrived at the settlement on November 15, 1832 his soldiers mutinied and killed him.