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Strait of Magellan

Strait of Magellan map

Sixteen georeferenced markers, the 1520 navigation route, and the 1881 chart laid over the modern channel.

The short answer

The Strait of Magellan runs 611 km from the Atlantic Mouth at Cape Virgenes to the Pacific Mouth at Cape Pillar. This map plots 16 markers along it, each with the source it was measured from, and draws the 1520 navigation route that first connected the two oceans.

Base map:

The dashed line is the 1520 navigation route, from the Atlantic Mouth to the Pacific Mouth. The 1881 chart is an overlay on the modern channel.

Cabo Froward

Cape Froward

The southernmost point of the American continent. The English navigator Thomas Cavendish named it in 1587, after the man who had ordered Francis Drake's execution.

Year
1587
Position
-53.9100, -71.3000
Source
SHOA

How to read this map

The dashed line is the route Magellan's expedition navigated in 1520, from the Atlantic Mouth past the two narrows, Punta Arenas, Cape Froward and Fuerte Bulnes to the Pacific Mouth. It is not a modern shipping lane, though it largely follows the same water.

The 1881 chart is an overlay you can switch on. It matters because the Strait has been surveyed and redrawn many times since, and the 1881 chart is the one that most people find in library collections and museum sites — the version that shows the channel before the dredging and the modern navigation marks.

Every marker carries its source. Where the coordinate comes from the Chilean Hydrographic Service charts it says so; where it comes from the 1881 boundary treaty it says that too. The one marker that needed a specific check is Cape Horn, whose position was verified against the official chart that covers it, SHOA 13200.

All 16 markers

Sources

Marker coordinates were checked on 2026-10-28. The 1881 chart overlay is a public-domain image.

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