The Bottom of the Map
500 Years on the Sea Road Around South America
The concept. Written for one cruise around the bottom of South America, from Buenos Aires past the Falklands, through the Beagle Channel and the Strait of Magellan, up to Valparaíso. One chapter per stop, and each asks why the place exists rather than what to see there. The answer is usually the sea road, for four centuries the only way by water between the Atlantic and the Pacific, which brought navies, settlers, missionaries, convicts and sheep to a coast where the Selk’nam, Yaghan and Kawésqar had lived for thousands of years.
How it was built. From primary texts first: Darwin’s Beagle Diary, FitzRoy’s Narrative, survey records and contemporary newspapers, with published histories for the war of 1982. Several hundred claims were checked against those sources, and the checking changed the text. Where the record is thin, the book says so.
What else is in it. The 1982 war, with both sovereignty cases set out from the documents. The route in 2026: more ships than in 1913, two towns competing to be the gateway to Antarctica, hydrogen and oil.
It is not a guidebook. It is for anyone travelling this coast who wants to know what they are looking at.
