Cape Horn is a headland on the Chilean island of Isla Hornos. Cape Horn is, apart from the remote, even more southerly Diego Ramirez Islands, the southernmost point of South America. Until the opening of the Panama Canal in August 1914, the route around Cape Horn was an important shipping route. It was the only way to get from Europe to the west coast of South America. The circumnavigation of the Cape was one of the most feared ship passages, as evidenced by the formation of the community of Cape Horniers. Commanding captains, who capped Cape Horn on a freighter without cargo engine, became honorary members of this international community. It is estimated that the extremely difficult sea off Cape Horn has made more than 800 ships and more than 10,000 people the doom and the largest ship graveyard in the world. To commemorate these sailors, a monument was erected on the Cape depicting a stylized albatross. A poem by the Chilean poet Sara Vial for the drowned can be found on a nearby board: "I am the albatross waiting for you at the end of the world. I am the forgotten soul of the dead sailors who sailed to Cape Horn, from all the seas of the earth. But they did not die in the raging waves, for now they fly forever on my wings into eternity, where the deepest abyss howls the Antarctic storm. "