Drake Passage 800-Shipwreck Graveyard

The Drake Passage has been described as having some of the roughest seas in the world, with about 20,000 sailors lost and more than 800 shipwrecks scattered through its waters between Cape Horn and Antarctica. Through this narrow bottleneck, an immense volume of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current surges every second, driving fierce currents and waves that can reach extreme heights. Those relentless conditions, where the Atlantic and Pacific oceans collide in heavy seas, have made the Drake Passage a legendary maritime hazard whose wrecks and death toll still define its fearsome reputation among sailors.

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