Antarctica's narrowest gap drives the planet's strongest current
Between Chile's Cape Horn and Antarctica's South Shetlands, the Drake Passage—also Sea of Hoces—funnels the Antarctic Circumpolar Current with no land to brake it. Waves can top twelve metres, earning a reputation as among the most powerful open waters on Earth.
The channel links southwestern Atlantic (Scotia Sea) to southeastern Pacific and is the choke point around Antarctica, shaping global ocean mixing and climate. Bathymetry helps stir deep and surface waters that elsewhere stay layered. For ships it is a notorious ordeal; for the climate system it is a valve.
Spanish navigator Francisco de Hoces is thought to have found the passage in 1525 after storms shoved him south of Magellan's strait—then vanished, leaving Magellanic memory and the Spanish name Mar de Hoces. Francis Drake's 1578 circumnavigation lent the English label after tempest drove Golden Hind's company far south of Magellan, revealing open water toward the ice.
Other firsts followed: in 1616 the Dutch navigator Willem Schouten became the first to round Cape Horn and sail through, and on 25 December 2019 six explorers became the first to row across, a feat filmed as The Impossible Row. The gap between Cape Horn and Livingston Island, about 800 kilometres, is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to any other landmass, and sailors often preferred it to the cramped, gusty Strait of Magellan and Beagle Channel. When the channel opened is disputed, with estimates from 49 to 17 million years ago, and the opening may have reshaped global circulation and helped Antarctic ice expand. The current it carries, driven by the Roaring Forties and Furious Fifties, moves an estimated 100 to 150 sverdrups. Whales, dolphins, albatrosses, giant petrels and penguins all use these waters.
Source: Drake Passage
