The other main way around South America was by way of Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn – the body of water between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn, Chile and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It connects the southwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean (Scotia Sea) with the southeastern part of the Pacific Ocean and extends into the Southern Ocean. The passage is named after the 16th-century English privateer, Francis Drake, who was the first to discover it in 1578. Most sailing ship captains preferred the Drake Passage, which is open water for hundreds of miles, despite being often marked by very rough conditions and high winds. There is no significant land anywhere around the world at the 55.6 to 62.8 degrees south latitude of the Drake Passage. This is important to the unimpeded flow of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, which carries a huge volume of water (about 600 times the flow of the Amazon River) through the passage and around Antarctica.