Francisco Coloane was born in 1910 in Quemchi, Chiloé, the son of a whaling captain. In 1923, still a boy, he came to Punta Arenas to study at the Salesian school, and in 1927 he won first prize at the Magallanes spring festival.
He never finished school: he worked as a secretary and began publishing stories in the region's papers and magazines. In 1929 he was hired as an apprentice foreman on a ranch in Tierra del Fuego. He was also a clerk for the Navy and joined oil-prospecting expeditions in Magallanes. Those years of ranches, shepherds, channels and wind gave him the material for nearly everything he wrote.
Later he published "Cabo de Hornos" and "El último grumete de la Baquedano", both in 1941, then "Tierra del Fuego" (1956) and "El camino de la ballena" (1962). He sailed with Chile's first Antarctic expedition in 1947, and in 1964 he won the Premio Nacional de Literatura.
He died in Santiago in 2002, aged 92. His ashes were scattered at sea off Quemchi, in Patagonia and at Quintero. In Punta Arenas his trace is in books rather than bronze: read "Tierra del Fuego" before you cross the Strait.