Chile won the Strait with a small wooden schooner and the Englishman who built it. John Williams Wilson was born in Bristol in 1798 and joined Chile's young navy in 1824, where they called him Juan Guillermos. In 1843, as port captain of Ancud, he oversaw building the schooner Ancud, and on 22 May he sailed south with 23 people aboard: sailors, the future garrison, four of their relatives and the naturalist Bernardo Philippi.
The voyage through the channels took four months. On 21 September 1843, at Punta Santa Ana, beside the ruins of the old Spanish Port Famine, Williams took possession of the Strait in the name of Chile. The next day the French ship Phaéton dropped anchor. Williams then oversaw the building of Fuerte Bulnes, and in 1848 the colony moved north to Punta Arenas.
He later governed Talcahuano and died in Valparaíso in 1857. Puerto Williams, on Navarino Island, is named after him. In Punta Arenas, the monument on the Costanera shows the Ancud's bow bursting out of rock, and a replica of the schooner sits at the Museo Nao Victoria.
