16th-Century Silver Coin Confirms Site of Doomed Rey Don Felipe Colony on the Strait of Magellan

Archaeologists led by researcher Soledad González Díaz of Universidad Bernardo O'Higgins announced on March 27, 2026, the discovery of a 16th-century silver 'real de a ocho' (piece of eight), minted in Potosí and bearing the insignia of King Philip II and the Jerusalem cross, found beneath the foundations of a colonial church at Rey Don Felipe — later renamed Puerto del Hambre ('Port Famine') — on the north shore of the Strait of Magellan in southern Chile. The coin matches a surviving 1584 eyewitness account describing a ceremonial coin deposited beneath the church cornerstone when navigator Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa formally founded the settlement on March 25, 1584, with roughly 300 Spanish colonists sent to guard the strait against English and other European rivals. Extreme cold and starvation killed nearly the entire population within three years; when English navigator Thomas Cavendish passed through in 1587 he found the colony largely in ruins and gave it the name that stuck. Using non-invasive survey methods, the team has since reconstructed the colony's layout, identifying dwelling, storage, and defensive structures — physical confirmation of the exact site of one of the most notorious failed Spanish colonization attempts in the Americas.