Today, the straggly town has a couple of pleasant squares, a former railway station and two museums, one with a collection of indigenous artifacts and one at the seafront with relics from the sloop of war HMS Swift which sank in 1770, recovered after its wreck was discovered in the port in 1982.

Sixty six years after the Magellan Elcano expedition, on 17 December 1586, the English privateer Thomas Cavendish sailed into the estuary during his voyage of circumnavigation seeking to raid the Pacific coasts of the Viceroyalty of Peru.

[citation needed] The English, a rival nation to Spain, tried to occupy Puerto Deseado and the southern part of the Viceroyalty of Peru during the 1670 John Narborough failed expedition.

During the seven months it was inhabited, houses, a bread oven, a forge, a hospital for scurvy and a wooden fort were built, and about one hundred people lived there, including the sea men.

It was built with a bread oven, farming land, a hospital, a chapel, fishing and salting facilities, and the Todos los Santos and San Carlos forts, which served as the presidio.

The desertion of the villagers, cost of constant supplies and lack of whales in the neighbourhood (only sea lions were found) caused the end of the Real Compañía Marítima, and the last soldiers of the presidio left in 1807 during the British invasions of the River Plate.

The village was founded for the third time in 1882 when Antonio Oneto obtained funds from Hipolito Irigoyen, Ministry of the Interior, to establish Deseado and Santa Cruz.

The Sunken Secret is based on the true story of the wreck and recovery of HMS Swift (1763) a British sloop of war that sank off the town's coast.