Beagle Channel

THE BEAGLE CHANNEL & TIERRA DEL FUEGO

The land-based wildlife of this part of the world is limited to foxes, beavers and rabbits. Along the Beagle Channel are sea lion and fur seal colonies, and extensive penguin and cormorant colonies. You may also see Andean condors and black-browed albatross along with other smaller species such as terns, oystercatchers, grebes and kelp geese.

Early indigenous local inhabitants used fire to keep themselves warm – hence the name: Tierra del Fuego. The ‘Land of Fire’ was so named in the 16th century by European explorers after seeing the ever-present fires of the Indians, one of their few means of keeping warm as they wore little or no clothing, despite the harsh climate. The extinction of the traditional hunter-gatherer lifestyle of Tierra del Fuego, means that the island has also lost the reason for its name.

Possession of 3 islands in the Beagle Channel (Picton, Lennox, Nueva) had been in contention since the early 1800s Tensions increased. Two bilateral commissions, seeking a solution, accomplished little. On December 9 1978 Argentina sent a naval squadron to the Beagle Channel region. Chile followed suit. Both prepared for war.

On December 11 Pope John Paul II sent a personal message to both presidents urging a peaceful solution. War preparations continued, as did diplomatic efforts to avert hostilities. On December 21 Chile accepted the Pope's mediation. Argentina did so the next day. On January 9 the Act of Montevideo was signed pledging both sides to a peaceful solution and a return to the military situation of early 1977. No significant reduction in tensions occurred until the democratic government of Raul Alfonsin took office in Argentina in December 1983 and on January 23 1984 signed, as did Chile, a Treaty of Peace and Friendship.

At the Vatican, Chile and Argentina signed a treaty giving the islands to Chile but most maritime rights to Argentina.

This region is perhaps best known as the basis for much of Darwin’s research on the Origin of the Species. Darwin sailed on the HMS Beagle under Lieutenant Robert FitzRoy.

Her first major voyage was from May 1826 to October 1830 with HMS Adventure, to chart the straits and passages of the southern tip of South America; it was during this voyage that the Beagle Channel, skirting the southern edge of Tierra del Fuego, was explored and named. Under the stress of arduous conditions in the waters around Tierra del Fuego, Captain Pringle Stokes killed himself in August 1828. Short of provisions and with many of the crew ill, Beagle returned to Buenos Aires where Lieutenant Robert FitzRoy took command for the homeward voyage.

FitzRoy commanded Beagle on her subsequent circumnavigation during which she was to complete the survey of Tierra del Fuego, the Chilean coast, and a number of Pacific islands, and to carry out chronometric observations—she carried 22 chronometers. Among the 74 crew and passengers were three Fuegians who were returning home. Also assigned to the ship was a twenty-one-year-old botany student, Charles Darwin, whose professor, J. S. Henslow, considered him not a "finished naturalist, but ... amply qualified for collecting, observing, and noting, anything new to be noted in Natural History."