Most understand that the construction of the Panama Canal was necessary in order to significantly reduce the travel time of going around the tip of South America.

While that is true, there are also much more treacherous and nefarious reasons why navigators wanted to explore the long way round.

Today we’ll learn more about one of the most dangerous and infamous straits that exists in the world, a rite of passage for some of the most renowned explorers, adventurers, and scientists humanity has produced, and a region ordinary mariners and commercial ships avoid at all costs: The Drake Passage.