From perdition to paradise: Patagonia, Juan Fernández, and the Southeastern Pacific in the British geographical imaginary, 1680–1768

As British interest in establishing an outpost in the South Pacific grew throughout the late seventeenth century, navigators and speculators alike sought a solution to the terrifying, costly, and often fatal challenge of traversing Patagonia. This article traces the emergence of the Juan Fernández Islands as an environmental antidote to the trials of Patagonian navigation. An uninhabited, temperate archipelago that abounded with edible flora and fauna, Juan Fernández materialised as the first reliable watering point in the Pacific where buccaneers refurbished their ships and replenished their crews. Charting the evolving representation of these locations in the accounts of Bartholomew Sharp (1680–1682), William Dampier (1679–91), and Woodes Rogers (1708–1711), we show how the trials of Patagonian nature and the Edenic delights of Juan Fernández became morally codified in the later accounts of George Shelvocke (1719–22) and George Anson's (1740–44) circumnavigations. We argue that repeated East-West encounters served to polarise representations of both locales, reinforcing connections between temperate climates, naval order, and pious forms of labour. In so doing, we highlight the contributions of appositional environments and the sequencing of destinations to the romanticised British geographical imaginary of the insular Southeastern Pacific.