Maritime Museum, Ushuaia, Day 108

Another lazy morning and another missed breakfast. Perhaps our time aboard the luxury Mare Australis was more tiring than I thought. After updating our diaries yet again (they are such a lot of work), Christi and I lunch on our leftover lamb dinner. We donate the bones to the local dog population, including Christi’s latest favorite canine victim, a chained terrier who appears to live permanently outside his owner’s house in a kennel whatever the weather. Next we visit the local tourist information office to add the official ‘Ushuaia End of the World’ stamp to our passports and then head to the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia. The museum is located in a former prison building that housed some of Argentina’s worst offenders.

The first prison was built in what is now Ushuaia in 1896. Part of the reason for establishing a prison here was to allow Argentina to claim sovereignty over the area. At that time the Strait of Magellan and passage around Cape Horn were strategic waterways linking the Atlantic and the Pacific – the Old World and the New. The first prisoners to arrive in Ushuaia were chosen in part for their construction skills, which were needed to actually build the prison. Until the prison was finally constructed, the prisoners slept in tents under freezing conditions – so in an odd sort of way the sooner the prison was built the better off the inmates would be. The current prison was built between 1902 and 1920: there were five pavilions (2-stories each) radiating out from a central hall, sufficient for 580 of the country’s worst convicts. It was Argentina’s answer to Alcatraz. And there were some truly evil inmates, including the mass murderer Mateo Banks who killed 8 members of his own family, purely to get his hands on the family’s wealth to pay off debts and a deranged 16-year old teenage boy Cayateno Santos Godino who delighted in torturing and killing children. The prison finally closed in 1947, the buildings being given over to the Navy.

Today the complex is known as the Maritime Museum of Ushuaia. Each of the pavilions is now dedicated to different aspects of local life and culture. The lower level of the first pavilion is devoted to the history of the prison while the second story details similar prisons around the world on one side and a history of Antarctic exploration on the other. A second pavilion has been left in its original state to give visitors a more chilling appreciation of the prison, while the third is an art gallery (first story) and a history of Ushuaia on the second. There is also an exhibition of model ships, reflecting the age of maritime exploration of Tierra del Fuego and south to Antarctica. And finally there is a sad portrayal of the demise of the Yamana at the hands of the ‘civilizing’ white man. There’s a lot to learn here at the end of the world.