The Drake Passage

Sailors have a name for its two moods: the Drake Lake and the Drake Shake. The Drake Passage, between Cape Horn and the Antarctic Peninsula, is the narrowest gap in the ring of ocean around Antarctica, and the whole Southern Ocean squeezes through it. With no land to slow them, winds and waves circle the globe here unbroken, and swells of more than 12 meters are common in storms. For the clipper ships rounding the Horn it was a graveyard. For the tens of thousands of tourists who now cross it each season on the way to Antarctica, it is two days of awe or seasickness, and sometimes both.

The passage spans about 800 kilometers between Cape Horn, on Chile's southernmost islands, and the South Shetland Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, the shortest crossing from Antarctica to any other continent. It links the southwestern Atlantic with the southeastern Pacific and is deep, with much of the floor more than 3,000 meters down. Through it flows the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the strongest ocean current on the planet, moving an estimated 100 to 150 million cubic meters of water every second from west to east. Icebergs drift north across it, the Antarctic Convergence marks a sharp drop in water temperature midway, and albatrosses, petrels, and whales follow the cold, nutrient-rich water. Chile and Argentina border it to the north, and the Beagle Channel port of Ushuaia is the main gateway.

Its English name honors Francis Drake, whose ship was blown south of Tierra del Fuego in 1578, showing that open sea lay beyond, though the first recorded passage around Cape Horn was made by the Dutch navigators Willem Schouten and Jacob Le Maire in 1616. In Spanish-speaking countries it is often called the Mar de Hoces, after the Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces, said to have seen it in 1525. Before the Panama Canal opened in 1914, it was a main route between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Geologists believe its opening, as South America separated from Antarctica tens of millions of years ago, let the circumpolar current form and helped freeze Antarctica. Today it carries research and supply ships and the bulk of Antarctic tourism.

• Argentina
  From Patagonia's ice to the pampas and the Andes bordering country
• Chile
  A ribbon of land between the Andes and the Pacific bordering country
• Atlantic Ocean
  The world's second-largest ocean and great highway of history connects
• Pacific Ocean
  Earth's largest and deepest ocean connects
• Southern Ocean
  The youngest-named ocean, encircling Antarctica part of
• The Strait of Magellan
  The winding channel through Chilean Patagonia that links the Atlantic and the Pacific north of Tierra del Fuego sheltered alternative
• Patagonia
  Wind, ice, and the emptiest end of the Americas south of
• Antarctica
  The frozen continent at the bottom of the world southern shore