Archaeologists uncover possible 19th-century castaway camp on island ‘at the end of the world’ | …

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Archaeologists uncover possible 19th-century castaway camp on island 'at the end of the world'

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On a desolate island at the end of the world, battered by freezing winds, archaeologists have uncovered the remains of a possible 19th-century castaway camp that may have belonged to a renowned Argentine sailor and his shipwrecked crew.

Isla de los Estados is a frigid island off the coast of Tierra del Fuego. In January 2026, archaeologists came across the remains of a castaway camp and re-examined pieces of a shipwreck at Lacroix Inlet, Franklin Bay, a new study in Antiquity reports. Based on their finds, the authors suggest these may be the remains of a temporary camp and the lost schooner brig "Espora."

Did a penguin-hunting crew survive here? New evidence of shipwreck remains and a possible castaway camp on an island off Patagonia

Researchers have found the remains of wooden shipwrecks and a small camp site on Isla de los Estados, an island off the southern tip of Argentina. The finds lie in Lacroix Inlet, part of Franklin Bay, and point to a sea accident from the nineteenth century. The team published the work in the journal Antiquity in October 2026.

Isla de los Estados sits across the Strait of Le Maire from Tierra del Fuego. Ships have used the waters around the island since the early 1600s, sailing between the Atlantic and the Pacific. The island also holds the ruins of the lighthouse behind Jules Verne’s 1905 novel Le Phare du bout du monde.

Stranded by a storm in 1873, an Argentine captain built a boat on the beach, and archaeologists may have found his camp

In 1873 Luis Piedra Buena lost his ship on Isla de los Estados and built a 33-foot cutter to escape. A camp found 490 feet from old hulls may be his.

On March 10, 1873, the Argentine captain Luis Piedra Buena ran his schooner onto a beach on Isla de los Estados, the island off Tierra del Fuego that English charts call Staten Island.

One anchor was dragging and the other had lost its stock, so he decided to put her on the sand. She went in sideways, and the surf knocked the oakum out of her seams until she sank in the shallows. He and seven men had come to boil penguins for oil.

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