THE CAPE WITH CLOUT

Cape Horn isn’t the only rocky protrusion into the wild seas of the Southern Ocean. Our own Campbell Island is located well into the ‘Screaming 50s’ at 52o 35’ 12” South and Rakiura Stewart Island languishes at a relatively balmy 47o.

But Cape Horn, like a coccyx at the base of the Andean spine, stands at 55o 58’ 48” South, about as far south as it is possible to go without setting foot on Antarctica. Until a railway line was laid across the Panama Isthmus in 1857 (and the canal opening in 1914), Cape Horn was the waypoint in the cheapest maritime route from the US and Europe to the South Pacific.

There is no land to the west and none to the east, all the way round the planet.