Located 1,600 kilometres (990 miles) south of Santiago, the island is part of Capitán Prat Province of the Aysén Region, Chile.

[2] The Guayaneco Archipelago is thought to have been a cohabitational contact zone between different canoe-faring indigenous peoples living north and south of it.

Anthropologist John Montgomery Cooper points out that it possibly made up a "meeting ground of quasi-friendly bilingual tribes".

[6][7] Northern tribes such as the Chonos, Huilliche and the Spanish of Chiloé called in colonial times the sea-faring people of the area of Wager Island "Caucahue".

[9] On 18 September 1740, the British warship HMS Wager (a part of Commodore George Anson's squadron) departed St Helens with a crew of 160 men[10] along with a large number of invalids and marines.

[28] One final survivor (Marine Lieutenant Thomas Hamilton) was rescued and brought to Chiloé Island by a Spanish search party about three months later.

[29][15] From late 1742 to 1769, the Spanish and the local indigenous people conducted multiple salvage expeditions on the wreck of HMS Wager.

A Jesuit priest named Pedro Flores conducted a small salvage operation in late 1742, in which he recovered nearly 100 kg (220 lb) of iron.

Apart from Caleta Tortel, the next closest settlement is the village of Villa Puerto Edén, 165 kilometres (103 miles) to the south.

[45][46] Three tectonic plates (the Antarctica, South America and Nazca) meet at the Chile Triple Junction (CTJ), near the Taitao Peninsula.

Subduction of the Chile Ridge beneath the South American plate at the CTJ has caused a sequence of three ridge–continent collisions, starting about 5 million years ago.

[48] Environmental conditions on the island are characterized by cool temperatures, high rainfall, strong subpolar winds, and rocky ground with generally thin soil and poor drainage.

Accordingly, most of the terrain is Magellanic moorland, peatlands and bogs consisting of mosses, grasses, cushion plants, and dwarf shrubs.