Читать книгу The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism (Vol. 1-4). The History of Sea Voyages, Discovery, Piracy and Maritime Warfare онлайн

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And now the exigencies of the service require us to tear ourselves away from gay and pleasant Valparaiso, and voyage in spirit round the Horn to the South-East American Station, which includes the whole coast, from Terra del Fuego to Brazil and Guiana. Friendly ports, Rio and Montevideo, are open to the Royal Navy as stations for necessary repairs or supplies; but the only strictly British port on the whole station is that at the dreary Falkland Islands, to be shortly described.

Every schoolboy knows that Cape Horn is even more dreaded than the other “Cape of Storms,” otherwise known as “The Cape,” par excellence. In these days, the introduction of steam has reduced much of the danger and horrors of the passage round, though on occasions they are sufficiently serious. In fact, now that there is a regular tug-boat service in the Straits of Magellan, there is really no occasion to go round it at all. In 1862 the writer rounded it, in a steamer of good power, when the water was as still as a mill-pond, and the Horn itself—a barren, black, craggy, precipitous rock, towering above the utter desolation and bleakest solitudes of that forsaken spot—was plainly in sight.