This is damn interesting.

Headphones recommend it.

Dead Reckoning.

Written by Alan Bellows.

In the Earth's extreme southern latitudes, where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet, there's a rocky gap of sea between the Earth's extreme southern latitudes, where the Pacific and Atlantic oceans meet, there's

a rocky gap of sea between Antarctica and South America, known as the Drake Passage.

Among 18th century seafarers, this corridor was also known by a more ghoulish nickname,

the Sailor's Graveyard.

In the so-called Age of Exploration, the Drake Passage was the least impractical route

for large European ships to travel around South America to access its west coast.

The passage hooks far south, almost to the Antarctic Circle, to navigate around Cape Horn on the extreme southern tip of the continent.

Sensible sailors avoided the corridor, except in the relatively calm summer.

Yet, on the 12th of April 1741, deep into blustery autumn, the British Royal Navy ship HMS Wager was at full sail in the

dead center of the Drake Passage.

A board wager, veteran ship's gunner John Bulkeley was the officer of the watch, overseeing

the ship's navigation in the midst of a violent storm.

The sky was a wet, howling tempest.

The sea undulated with mountainous swells.

Wagers' timbers creaked, and her sails thrashed as the air and ocean conspired to smash

the ship to pieces.

Volkley had seen a lot of storms in his day, but nothing like this.

One ocean swell, the largest he had ever witnessed, swept

...