As regards sea transport Chile is in an enviable situation with her immense coastline giving speedy access to all inhabited parts of her territory. It is true that with a few exceptions, of which Talcahuano is the most notable, Chilean ports are little more than open roadsteads, exposed both to the southwesterly gales and to the dreaded “northers”; but modern engineering is doing much to solve the problem of safe havens where visiting vessels may anchor in safety. The same difficulty applies to almost the whole of the South American West Coast, and for centuries sailing vessels feared the region; during Spanish colonial times it was so common a thing for a ship to spend from six to twelve months on the passage between Callao and South Chile that when Captain Juan Fernández, running out southwest for a thousand miles, and afterwards turning almost due east for Chilean ports, managed to avoid the cruel coastal gales and made the passage in thirty days, he was haled before the Inquisition as a wizard. The Inquisitors, however, after careful examination of the captain’s papers, set him free, applauding his sagacity. From that day the group of islands named to commemorate the navigator’s skill became the beacon for vessels sailing to Valparaiso from the North, although ships returning to Peru still hugged the coast.
It is not uncommon for sailing vessels to be wrecked off the difficult southerly coast, with its innumerable indentations and furious storms, but the worst year of the present century was 1911, when 37 steamers as well as, by a strange coincidence, an exactly equal number of sailing ships, were cast away off Chile. That was a year of exceptional storms, but out of 32 years between 1887 and 1919, only seven passed without a record of wrecks; it is to the credit of the excellent surveying and charting work of the Hydrographic Department of the Chilean Navy that the path of the navigator has been rendered plainer, while the Chilean Government has in hand a series of plans for the better protection of ports—lacking only the financial sinews of war against wind and tide.
Of Chile’s fifty-four ports of major and minor importance, perhaps thirty are visited by international shipping. But of these only about fifteen display brisk commerce. Arica, visited by 400 foreign ships annually and over 300 Chilean vessels, connects directly with Bolivia; Pisagua, Junin, Caleta Buena, Iquique, Tocopilla, Mejillones and its younger sister Antofagasta, Coloso and Taltal, are nitrate ports, bustling when nitrate markets prosper and almost idle during the most depressed period of 1921. The copper ports of Chañaral, Caldera and Carrizal Bajo have suffered more than Coquimbo, with fruit and other farm exports to add to her diminished list of minerals. Valparaiso, chief port of Chile, receives about one thousand national and three hundred foreign ships yearly, one-third of the whole exports entering here, although Antofagasta and Iquique are the big exporters. In normal years, Valparaiso receives 1,400,000 tons of cargo, of which nearly half is coal. Farther south, Talcahuano, the chief naval base and the port for flourishing Concepción, receives about 400 vessels annually; Coronel, exporting and bunkering Chilean coal, receives about 700; Corral, the port for Valdivia, is visited by some 200 ships yearly; and Punta Arenas in the Strait of Magellan, does business with twelve hundred Chilean and about one hundred and thirty foreign vessels each year.
Coquimbo, the “Capital of North Chile.”
Ancud, the Port of Chiloé Island.
Zapallar, a beautiful Chilean Watering Place.
These ports will probably continue to be the great outlets for Chile’s most thriving regions, but they are insufficient to serve the needs of a long list of growing districts, and in spite of much good planning are still inadequately equipped for the increasing work required. A special Government Commission, lately considering the question of more sea gateways, has decided that forty or so of the points along the Chilean coast should be improved for the reception of international shipping.