Drake Passage

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Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.

Drake Passage between South America and Antarctica.

The Drake Passage is the body of water between the southern tip of South America at Cape Horn and the South Shetland Islands of Antarctica. It forms part of the Southern Ocean. It is named after 16th century English privateer Sir Francis Drake, although he never sailed the Passage, opting instead for the less turbulent Strait of Magellan.

The first recorded voyage through the passage was that of the Eendracht, captained by Willem Schouten in 1616.

The 400-mile-wide passage is the shortest crossing from Antarctica to the rest of the world's land. The boundary between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is sometimes taken to be a line drawn from Cape Horn to Snow Island (160 miles north of mainland Antarctica). Alternatively the meridian that passes through Cape Horn may be taken as the boundary. Both boundaries lie entirely within the Drake Passage.

The passage is open water, except for the very small Diego Ramirez Islands about 50 km (30 mi) south of Cape Horn. There is no significant land anywhere around the world at the latitudes of the Drake Passage, which 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) through the Passage and round Antarctica.

Seas in the Drake Passage are famously rough, with waves over 10 meters high not uncommon. Located between 56 and (approximately) 60 degrees south latitude, the passage is undoubtedly the source of the sailors' maxim that "Below 40 degrees, there is no law. Below 50 degrees, there is no God."

Ships in the passage are often good platforms for the sighting of whales, dolphins and plentiful seabirds including giant petrels, other petrels, albatrosses and penguins.

The passage is known to have been closed until around 41 million years ago[link] according to a study of old fish teeth. Before the passage opened, the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans were separated entirely with Antarctica being much warmer and having no ice. The joining of the two great oceans started the Antarctic Circumpolar Current and cooled the continent significantly.

Older references refer to the passage as the Drake Strait.

External links

• [National Oceanography Centre, Southampton page of the important and complex bathymetry of the Passage]
• [A personal story describing crossing the Passage]
• [A NASA image of an eddy in the Passage]
• [Larger-scale images of the passage from the US Navy (Rain, ice edge and wind images)]
• [BBC News story on a scientific study dating the age of the Drake Passage]

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