Drake Passage

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Tourist expedition ship Akademik Ioffe sailing across the Drake Passage to Antarctica
Depth profile with salinity and temperature for surface water.


Half a century earlier, after a gale had pushed them South from the entrance of the Strait of Magellan, the crew of the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces thought they saw a land's end and possibly inferred this passage in 1525.[1] For this reason, some Spanish and Latin American historians and sources call it Mar de Hoces after Francisco de Hoces.

The first recorded voyage through the passage was that of the Eendracht, captained by the Dutch navigator Willem Schouten in 1616, naming Cape Horn in the process.

The 800-kilometre (500 mi) wide passage between Cape Horn and Livingston Island is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to the rest of the world's land. The boundary between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is sometimes taken to be a line drawn from Cape Horn to Snow Island (130 kilometres (81 mi) north of mainland Antarctica). Alternatively the meridian that passes through Cape Horn may be taken as the boundary. Both boundaries lie entirely within the Drake Passage.

The other two passages around the extreme southern part of South America (though not going around Cape Horn as such), Magellan Strait and Beagle Channel, are very narrow, leaving little room for a ship, particularly a sailing ship, to maneuver. They can also become icebound, and sometimes the wind blows so strongly no sailing vessel can make headway against it. Hence most sailing ships preferred the Drake Passage, which is open water for hundreds of miles, despite very rough conditions. The very small Diego Ramírez Islands lie about 100 kilometres (62 mi) south-southwest of Cape Horn.



The passage is known to have been closed until around 41 million years ago[2] according to a chemical study of fish teeth found in oceanic sedimentary rock. Before the passage opened, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated entirely with Antarctica being much warmer and having no ice cap. The joining of the two great oceans started the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and cooled the continent significantly.

See also[edit]


  1. ^ Oyarzun, Javier, Expediciones españolas al Estrecho de Magallanes y Tierra de Fuego, 1976, Madrid: Ediciones Cultura Hispánica ISBN 84-7232-130-4
  2. ^ Helen Briggs (21 April 2006). "Fossil gives clue to big chill". BBC News. Retrieved 2007-11-01. 

External links[edit]

Coordinates: 58°34′49″S 65°54′34″W﻿ / ﻿58.58028°S 65.90944°W﻿ / -58.58028; -65.90944