Cape Horn
Identified and rounded in 1616 by Dutchmen Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire, who named it after the city of Hoorn in the Netherlands, Cape Horn is Tierra del Fuego's southernmost headland, the Drake Passage's northern boundary and the point where the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans meet. Although the cape on Hornos Island was a significant milestone on the clipper route to Europe, a combination of factors make the waters particularly hazardous.
• The convergence of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and the Brazil Current generates turbulent waters and unpredictable conditions,
• Prevailing westerly winds in latitudes below 40° south— the roaring forties, furious fifties and screaming sixties can reach extraordinary speeds. Unpredictable weather conditions that change rapidly, requiring navigators to be highly adaptable.
• Frigid atmospheric and water temperatures increase the risks associated with prolonged exposure and hypothermia.
• Giant waves, with icebergs and floating ice fragments, during the southern spring and summer.
• A complex underwater topography, with varying depths and submerged islands, presents an additional level of risk to navigation.
On that basis, it might seem logical to seek an easier route into the Pacific through the Straits of Magellan between the mainland and Tierra del Fuego or the Beagle Channel between Tierra del Fuego's mainland and the maze of islands that lie to its south. Still, the 650-kilometre-wide Drake Passage, between Cape Horn and Antarctica, offers sea room to manoeuvre as conditions change and remains the preferred route despite the possibility of extreme conditions.
After Ferdinand Magellan made his way through the Straits that bear his name in 1520, the first vessel to round the Horn was the San Lesmes, commanded by Francisco de Hoces, separated from the rest of García Jofre de Loaísa's 1526 expedition on the Atlantic side of the Magellan Strait and blown south by gale-force winds, passing through 56° S and sighting land on the way into the Pacific. As a result, the sea separating South America from Antarctica appears as Mar de Hoces (Sea of Hoces) in Spanish-language maps. Francis Drake's September 1578 passage through the same waters confirmed that Tierra del Fuego was not part of a larger land mass and prompted the widespread labelling of the same waters as the Drake Passage.
Despite these two voyages, Magellan's route continued to be the preferred option until well after Jacob Le Maire and Willem Schouten attempted to break the VOC's monopoly of Dutch trade via the only known sea routes to the Far East at the time. Their discovery of Cape Horn was believed to have identified Tierra del Fuego's southernmost point. Eight years later, Jacques l'Hermite established that the Cape was, in fact, an island.
The opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914 meant ships bound for Europe and North America's east coast no longer needed to travel 'around the Horn' en route from the Pacific, but larger vessels, including supertankers and aircraft carriers, that are too large to pass through the Canal have no choice in the matter and the passage remains one of the significant challenges for sailors who consider the passage be the yachting equivalent of climbing Mount Everest.
Links to add:
Willem Schouten
Jacob Le Maire
Hoorn
Tierra del Fuego
Drake Passage
Hornos Island
Antarctic Circumpolar Current
Brazil Current
Straits of Magellan
Beagle Channel
San Lesmes
Francis Drake
Francisco de Hoces
García Jofre de Loaísa
Jacques l'Hermite
Panama Canal
