Juan Fernández Islands

The Juan Fernández Archipelago reads like an adventure novel brought to life. When Spanish navigator Juan Fernández first spotted these volcanic peaks rising from the Pacific in 1574, he unknowingly set the stage for centuries of maritime drama. Pirates and privateers used the islands as hideouts, and the Spanish built a chain of six coastal fortresses—some still armed with original artillery—to defend against them.

The archipelago’s most famous chapter began in 1704, when Scottish privateer Alexander Selkirk requested to be left ashore on what was then called Más a Tierra, fearing his ship Cinque Ports was unseaworthy. He was right—the ship sank shortly after—but Selkirk spent four years and four months surviving alone before rescue in 1709. His story inspired Daniel Defoe’s 1719 novel Robinson Crusoe, and in 1966 Chile renamed the island in the character’s honor. Two centuries after Selkirk, World War I reached these remote shores when the German cruiser SMS Dresden, the sole survivor of the Battle of the Falkland Islands, was cornered in Cumberland Bay by British warships in March 1915. Rather than surrender, her crew scuttled the ship—its wreck still lies in the harbor, with cannonballs from the battle embedded in the surrounding cliffs.