Cape Horn

Cape Horn (Spanish, Cabo de Hornos), promontory, southern Chile, in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, on Horn Island. It marks the southernmost point of South America and extends into Drake Passage, the Antarctic strait connecting the South Atlantic and South Pacific oceans. The rocky terrain of the cape rises to a height of 424 m (1,391 ft). Storms, strong currents, and icebergs make passage around Cape Horn extremely hazardous. During the era of sailing ships, hundreds of vessels were wrecked while “rounding the Horn”. The Dutch navigator Willem Cornelis Schouten, the first European to sail around the cape (1616), named it after his birthplace, Hoorn, Netherlands.