Drake Passage
Last night brought us highly variable winds and a confused sea, typical Drake Passage weather which our little ship handled beautifully, giving us an easy and comfortable ride. Morning found us near the end of our Drake experience, just off one of the most notorious of the world’s headlands – Cape Horn!
We’ve made an epic journey to the ends of the earth in only a few weeks. In contrast, the year 1520 found Ferdinand Magellan labouring to work his three ships through his eponymous Strait; a task lasting 37 days. Tierra del Fuego had been found, and named, by Europeans. By 1578 the Elizabethan gentleman, or if you prefer, buccaneer, Sir Francis Drake made it through the Strait in only 16 days. Upon reaching the Pacific he was blown far to the southeast and another cartographic conclusion was irrefutable – Tierra del Fuego was not the Great Southern Continent, merely an island. Drake’s name was lent to one of the globe’s most impressive slices of ocean. Drake notwithstanding, the oceans and their trade routes had long belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese. The 1600’s were to see the advent of a new global maritime power based in a tiny European country. It was the Dutch who monopolized world trade after Drake’s defeat of the Armada, and it was the Dutch who named this storm-wracked island at the southern tip of the Americas. On 29 January 1616, Jacob le Maire, with Cornelius and Wilhelm Schouten, sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific round the Horn in the tiny Eendracht, and named the island ‘Cap Hoorn’, after their hometown in Holland.
We’ve been privileged to visit the Great Southern Continent, and it is no less awesome to see this fabled point of land. It is fascinating and terrible at the same time, prompting Charles Darwin to write in 1838, “The sight is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril and shipwreck.” Our thoughts are far more sanguine as we head into the sheltered Beagle Channel for our approach to Ushuaia, and lives that have been forever touched by the South.
Last night brought us highly variable winds and a confused sea, typical Drake Passage weather which our little ship handled beautifully, giving us an easy and comfortable ride. Morning found us near the end of our Drake experience, just off one of the most notorious of the world’s headlands – Cape Horn!
We’ve made an epic journey to the ends of the earth in only a few weeks. In contrast, the year 1520 found Ferdinand Magellan labouring to work his three ships through his eponymous Strait; a task lasting 37 days. Tierra del Fuego had been found, and named, by Europeans. By 1578 the Elizabethan gentleman, or if you prefer, buccaneer, Sir Francis Drake made it through the Strait in only 16 days. Upon reaching the Pacific he was blown far to the southeast and another cartographic conclusion was irrefutable – Tierra del Fuego was not the Great Southern Continent, merely an island. Drake’s name was lent to one of the globe’s most impressive slices of ocean. Drake notwithstanding, the oceans and their trade routes had long belonged to the Spanish and Portuguese. The 1600’s were to see the advent of a new global maritime power based in a tiny European country. It was the Dutch who monopolized world trade after Drake’s defeat of the Armada, and it was the Dutch who named this storm-wracked island at the southern tip of the Americas. On 29 January 1616, Jacob le Maire, with Cornelius and Wilhelm Schouten, sailed from the Atlantic to the Pacific round the Horn in the tiny Eendracht, and named the island ‘Cap Hoorn’, after their hometown in Holland.
We’ve been privileged to visit the Great Southern Continent, and it is no less awesome to see this fabled point of land. It is fascinating and terrible at the same time, prompting Charles Darwin to write in 1838, “The sight is enough to make a landsman dream for a week about death, peril and shipwreck.” Our thoughts are far more sanguine as we head into the sheltered Beagle Channel for our approach to Ushuaia, and lives that have been forever touched by the South.
