After the discovery of Magellan Strait on 1520 by Fernando de Magallanes, during 16th to 18th centuries, a series of expeditions were carried out by daring and intrepid seafarers, as much Spanish as English, Dutch and French. Some of them driven by their eagerness to discover and keep safe the longed-for pass to the Indies, and at the same time to take possession of those discovered lands and, others, determined to defy the Spanish power in the Pacific.

It is estimated that over these three centuries, not many regions of the world may exhibit in the history of its discoveries such amount of expeditions, which, at the same time, gave rise to a substantial number of shipwrecks.

Figures as Drake, Sarmiento de Gamboa, Bouganville, Dumont d'Urville, Malaspina, James Cook, Fitz Roy and Parker King, among others, left behind them indelible marks of their sailing the Magellan Strait.

Although it is true that in the extensive work "Shipwrecks in the coasts of Chile", by Francisco Vidal Gormaz, are mentioned almost all the shipwrecks happened and registered as such, in the light of discoveries reported by other navigators about wreckage in places not mentioned by this author, it is possible to presume that the amount of ships sunk in these areas is larger than the registered.

The increase, and need, of trade between Europe and the new South American republics on 19th century, coincides with steam navigation. So, on October of 1840, the recently created Pacific Steam Navigation Company, PSNC, marks the beginning of steam navigation on the Magellan Strait with its two twin paddle steamers "Chile" and "Peru".

Years later, German line Kosmos and French line Compagnie Maritime du Pacifique allocated theirs steamers to Chile through Magellan Strait.

But as much as paddle steamers as those with propellers, faced a common problem: the enormous consumption of coal in ship's boilers. Packet boat "Britannia", the first paddle steamer of Cunard Line, for instance, consumed 38 tons of coal a day.

That situation moved shipbuilders to maintain the classic sail rigging, that is, the bowsprit and the foremast, main and mizzen, securing on the one hand the long cruisers through the oceans and on the other hand an emergency resort in case of an engine failure, as happened to steamer "Mataura", that went through a hopeless situation, travelling from New Zealand to England through Cape Horn on 1898. Its captain succeeded in saving passengers and cargo after his engines broke in the middle of a violent storm, beaching the ship in a sheltered inlet in the northwestern side of Desolacion island.

To the steamers belong most of the wreckage located and explored by the author of this summary, among which we may mention German steamers "DENDERAH" and "ARTESIA"; the French "ATLANTIQUE", and the British "CORDILLERA", "CANTON", "SANTIAGO" and "MATAURA".

"El Magallanes" a newspaper founded on the beginning of 1894, published the detailed news of the shipwreck of French steamer "ATLANTIQUE", lost opposite Magdalena island, on April 29th of 1894.