Video

In the 1700s Cape Horn had become familiar to whale hunters. After the American War of Independence, Yankee traders began to carry cargo from the East Coast to the West Coast.

Regular traffic around Cape Horn began with the California Gold Rush in 1848. People, all their paraphernalia, tools, weapons and building materials flooded along the fastest-known route from Europe to the coast of California.

When, by the end of the nineteenth century, steamships had taken over almost all of the freight routes, the big deep-sea windjammers continue to round Cape Horn loaded with grain, wool, coal, coke, timber, machines and building materials, or simply in ballast on their way to fetch saltpetre and guano from Chile or grain from Frisco.

The major German and French shipping companies using sailing ships - primarily Laeisz of Hamburg and Bordes & Fils of Dunkirk - began regular shipments of saltpetre which continued up until the First World War.

The "Frisco Grain Trade"

In the mid 1800s, grain and wool shipments from Australia and America to Europe began. "The Frisco Grain Trade" began in 1870s and for the whole of the 1880s it was one of the sailing ships’ most important routes.

Trade in Guano

In 1840s, after the German chemist Liebig had demonstrated the value of guano as fertilizer, it became Chile’s most important export item. The high point of the guano trade was in the 1860s, when hundreds of ships sailed round Cape Horn carrying bird excrement.