The need for boats and ships to round Cape Horn was greatly reduced by the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914.

[5] A short distance from the main station is a memorial, including a large sculpture made by Chilean sculptor José Balcells featuring the silhouette of an albatross, in remembrance of the sailors who died while attempting to "round the Horn".

A 2019 research expedition found the world's southernmost tree growing, a Magellan's beech mostly bent to the ground, on a northeast-facing slope at the island's southeast corner.

Some of the small passenger vessels shuttling between Ushuaia and the Antarctic Peninsula will pass the Horn too, time and weather permitting.

The Beagle Channel (named for the ship of Charles Darwin's expedition), between Tierra del Fuego and Isla Navarino, offers a potential, though difficult route.

Rounding Cape Horn can be done on a day trip by helicopter or more arduously by charter power boat or sailboat, or by cruise ship.

The prevailing winds in latitudes below 40° south can blow from west to east around the world almost uninterrupted by land, giving rise to the "roaring forties" and the even more wild "furious fifties" and "screaming sixties".

[30] On Cape Horn proper is a smaller 4-metre (13-foot) fiberglass light tower, with a focal plane of 40 metres (130 feet) and a range of about 21 kilometres (13 miles).

[30] A few minor aids to navigation are located farther south, including one in the Diego Ramírez Islands and several in Antarctica.

Owing to the remoteness of the location and the hazards there, a rounding of Cape Horn is widely considered to be the yachting equivalent of climbing Mount Everest, and so many sailors seek it for its own sake.

[1] In 1934, the Norwegian Al Hansen was the first to round Cape Horn single-handed from east to west—the "wrong way"—in his boat Mary Jane, but was subsequently wrecked on the coast of Chile.

[34] The first person to successfully circumnavigate the world single-handed via Cape Horn was Argentinian Vito Dumas, who made the voyage in 1942 in his 33-foot (10-metre) ketch Lehg II; a number of other sailors have since followed him,[35][unreliable source?]

On March 31, 2010, 16-year-old Abby Sunderland became the youngest person to single-handedly sail around Cape Horn in her attempt to circumnavigate the globe.

The Jules Verne Trophy is a prize for the fastest circumnavigation of the world by any type of yacht, with no restrictions on the size of the crew (no assistance, non-stop).

Finally, the Global Challenge race goes around the world the "wrong way", from east to west, which involves rounding Cape Horn against the prevailing winds and currents.

"[citation needed] Since the discovery, the sea separating South America from Antarctica bears the name of its discoverer in Spanish sources.

[39] Jacob Le Maire, Isaac's son, went on the journey as "chiefe Marchant and principall factor," in charge of trading aspects of the endeavour.

It was Eendracht then, with the crew of the recently wrecked Hoorn aboard,[41] that passed through the Le Maire Strait and Schouten and Le Maire made their great discovery: At the time it was discovered, the Horn was believed to be the southernmost point of Tierra del Fuego; the unpredictable violence of weather and sea conditions in the Drake Passage made exploration difficult, and it was only in 1624 that the Horn was discovered to be an island.

This abortive Horn voyage has been portrayed (with varying historical accuracy) in three major motion pictures about Captain William Bligh's mission to transport breadfruit plants from Tahiti to Jamaica.

One of the classic accounts of a working ship in the age of sail is Two Years Before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana Jr., in which the author describes an arduous trip from Boston to California via Cape Horn: Just before eight o'clock (then about sundown, in that latitude) the cry of "All hands ahoy!"

was sounded down the fore scuttle and the after hatchway, and hurrying upon deck, we found a large black cloud rolling on toward us from the south-west, and blackening the whole heavens.

Here was an end to our fine prospects....After nine more days of headwinds and unabated storms, Dana reported that his ship, the "Pilgrim" finally cleared the turbulent waters of Cape Horn and turned northwards.

We stood out to sea, and on the second day again made the land, when we saw on our weather-bow this notorious promontory in its proper form—veiled in a mist, and its dim outline surrounded by a storm of wind and water.

Great black clouds were rolling across the heavens, and squalls of rain, with hail, swept by us with such extreme violence, that the Captain determined to run into Wigwam Cove.

The gale is of hurricane force, but the bird sails serenely and unhurriedly through the air, within a few feet of the ship's rail, on the windward side.

Then it turns into the eye of the wind, and disappears in the murk —westward —without any discernible effort in its aerial gliding, while we are still drifting to leeward, incapable of emulating its brilliant defiance of the gusts.

[53] More recent sailors have taken on the Horn singly, such as Vito Dumas, who wrote Alone Through The Roaring Forties based on his round-the-world voyage;[54] or with small crews.

His book The Long Way tells the story of this latter voyage, and of a peaceful night-time passage of the Horn: "The little cloud underneath the moon has moved to the right.

"[56] John Masefield wrote: "Cape Horn, that tramples beauty into wreck / And crumples steel and smites the strong man dumb.

In 1980 Keith F. Critchlow directed and produced the documentary film "Ghosts of Cape Horn", with the participation and archaeological consulting of famous underwater archaeologist Peter Throckmorton.