Juan Fernandez High Sea

The Juan Fernández offshore Pacific formed part of the ocean approaches to Chile, several hundred kilometres from the mainland. Its history is tied to ships reaching the archipelago after rounding South America and to the rivalry over access to its anchorages. In 1741 George Anson's expedition arrived after storms around Cape Horn had scattered his squadron and the Wager had been wrecked off Patagonia. Anson postponed an intended attack on Valdivia and sought Juan Fernández so that his surviving ships could be repaired and their crews recover.

Such visits showed Spanish officials the strategic consequences of leaving offshore stopping places available to enemies. A plan for permanent occupation in 1750 included Robinson Crusoe Island, then known as Más a Tierra, alongside a separate project in the Chonos archipelago. These were attempts to secure specific islands and harbours, not to settle the open sea. Toward the end of the eighteenth century whaling vessels also visited Juan Fernández, and early nineteenth-century sealing drew on its fur-seal colonies. Naval recovery, imperial defence and commercial hunting thus gave successive purposes to voyages across the same remote waters.