Rounding Cape Horn, South America
Cape Horn! The very name conjures up images of ferocious storms battering wooden sailing ships as the iron men manning them struggle to beat against the wind from Atlantic to Pacific.
Our reality this afternoon was somewhat more benign. After a moderate passage north across the Drake, we caught sight of the infamous Cape Horn early this afternoon. Captain Lampe maneuvered Endeavour just west of the southern tip of the island, then turned her east, passing just below the looming cliffs along the southern shore. Thus we ‘rounded the Horn’ with complete ease, as albatross and petrels wheeled in our wake.
Who was the first to see this stormy southernmost outlier of the Tierra del Fuegian archipelago? Undoubtedly the earliest natives of the area, adept canoe travelers, visited all these islands. But the first European to lay eyes on the Cape was William Cornelius Schouten, a Dutch mariner who first sighted the island on 29 January 1616. History has memorialized Magellan and Drake by naming significant features for them. Schouten is less famous, yet his discovery was momentous in its day.
In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovered and transited the Straits that bear his name. The route was torturous for the square-rigged ships of the day; it took Magellan 38 days to pass through the 330 mile Strait. In 1578 Sir Francis Drake passed through the Straits in a record 16 days en route to the Pacific – the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world never even sailed out into the notorious passage named for him!
The late 1500’s saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the stranglehold on Orient trade long held by the Spanish and Portuguese began to crumble. Queen Elizabeth chartered the British East India Co. in 1600, and the Dutch followed suit in 1602 with the formation of the Dutch East India Co. The latter proclaimed the Straits of Magellan as well as the passage around the Cape of Good Hope open only to members of the company, leaving independent Dutch traders out in the cold.
In 1615 Issac Lemaire, trader of Antwerp, fitted out two ships, Eendracht and Hoorn, to attempt to find a way around the tip of South America. William Schouten, from the village of Hoorn, led the expedition, accompanied by Lemaire’s son Jacob. They discovered and named Staten Island, for the States General (governing body of the Netherlands), and the Straits of Lemaire, between that island and Tierra del Fuego, for the sponsor of the expedition. Finally on January 29th 1616 they sighted this headland, naming it Cape Hoorn after their home port.
This discovery was significant both politically and navigationally. Here was a route to the Pacific open to any seamen brave enough to attempt it. And despite the fearsome storms the area is famous for, a passage around the Horn was in many ways less dangerous and faster than clawing one’s way through the shallow winding Straits of Magellan.
As worldwide trade exploded and empires were built on ever larger and faster sailing vessels, rounding the Horn, although always dangerous, became commonplace for mariners until steam usurped sail, and the great canals linked oceans. Today we made a spiritual connection, however fleeting, to those brave sailors of past centuries.
Cape Horn! The very name conjures up images of ferocious storms battering wooden sailing ships as the iron men manning them struggle to beat against the wind from Atlantic to Pacific.
Our reality this afternoon was somewhat more benign. After a moderate passage north across the Drake, we caught sight of the infamous Cape Horn early this afternoon. Captain Lampe maneuvered Endeavour just west of the southern tip of the island, then turned her east, passing just below the looming cliffs along the southern shore. Thus we ‘rounded the Horn’ with complete ease, as albatross and petrels wheeled in our wake.
Who was the first to see this stormy southernmost outlier of the Tierra del Fuegian archipelago? Undoubtedly the earliest natives of the area, adept canoe travelers, visited all these islands. But the first European to lay eyes on the Cape was William Cornelius Schouten, a Dutch mariner who first sighted the island on 29 January 1616. History has memorialized Magellan and Drake by naming significant features for them. Schouten is less famous, yet his discovery was momentous in its day.
In 1520 Ferdinand Magellan discovered and transited the Straits that bear his name. The route was torturous for the square-rigged ships of the day; it took Magellan 38 days to pass through the 330 mile Strait. In 1578 Sir Francis Drake passed through the Straits in a record 16 days en route to the Pacific – the first Englishman to circumnavigate the world never even sailed out into the notorious passage named for him!
The late 1500’s saw the defeat of the Spanish Armada, and the stranglehold on Orient trade long held by the Spanish and Portuguese began to crumble. Queen Elizabeth chartered the British East India Co. in 1600, and the Dutch followed suit in 1602 with the formation of the Dutch East India Co. The latter proclaimed the Straits of Magellan as well as the passage around the Cape of Good Hope open only to members of the company, leaving independent Dutch traders out in the cold.
In 1615 Issac Lemaire, trader of Antwerp, fitted out two ships, Eendracht and Hoorn, to attempt to find a way around the tip of South America. William Schouten, from the village of Hoorn, led the expedition, accompanied by Lemaire’s son Jacob. They discovered and named Staten Island, for the States General (governing body of the Netherlands), and the Straits of Lemaire, between that island and Tierra del Fuego, for the sponsor of the expedition. Finally on January 29th 1616 they sighted this headland, naming it Cape Hoorn after their home port.
This discovery was significant both politically and navigationally. Here was a route to the Pacific open to any seamen brave enough to attempt it. And despite the fearsome storms the area is famous for, a passage around the Horn was in many ways less dangerous and faster than clawing one’s way through the shallow winding Straits of Magellan.
As worldwide trade exploded and empires were built on ever larger and faster sailing vessels, rounding the Horn, although always dangerous, became commonplace for mariners until steam usurped sail, and the great canals linked oceans. Today we made a spiritual connection, however fleeting, to those brave sailors of past centuries.
