When Major José de los Santos Mardones reached Fuerte Bulnes in April 1847, the colony was dying. He was a veteran of the independence wars of Chile and the River Plate, and he saw the problem at once: on that rocky point there was nowhere to farm, the wind shook the houses and mud covered everything.
He explored about a hundred kilometres of coast to the north looking for a better site, and wrote to Santiago again and again asking permission to move. Meanwhile, more convicts kept arriving. In March 1848 a fire destroyed almost half the fort. According to the historian Mateo Martinic, Mardones did not rebuild: he put up temporary huts and began building somewhere else, on a sandy point by the Río del Carbón.
On 16 December 1848 he left Fuerte Bulnes with the chaplain, Friar Domingo Passolini, and on the 18th he reached the new settlement. That is Punta Arenas' founding date. He governed until April 1851, when he handed over to Benjamín Muñoz Gamero.
Today his full name is on the pier at Bahía Catalina, where the cruise ships dock.
