Sixteen men of Pascual de Iriate's expedition are lost at Evangelistas Islets at the western end of the Strait of Magellan.

The Antonio de Vea expedition of 1675–1676 was a Spanish naval expedition to the fjords and channels of Patagonia aimed to find whether rival colonial powers—specifically, the English—were active in the region. While this was not the first Spanish expedition to the region, it was the largest up to then, involving 256 men, one ocean-going ship, two long boats and nine dalcas. The expedition dispelled suspicion about English bases in Patagonia. Spanish authorities' knowledge of western Patagonia was greatly improved by the expedition, yet Spanish interest in the area waned thereafter until the 1740s.

The Evangelistas Islets are a group of four small, rocky islands lying on the Chilean continental shelf, some 30 km north-west of the western entrance to the Strait of Magellan, in the south-eastern Pacific Ocean, facing the full force of the "Furious Fifties". They come under the jurisdiction of the Chilean Navy which operates the Chilean Maritime Signalling Service and has maintained a presence there since the establishment of the Evangelistas Lighthouse in 1896 by Scottish engineer George Henry Slight.

The Strait of Magellan, also called the Straits of Magellan, is a navigable sea route in southern Chile separating mainland South America to the north and the Tierra del Fuego archipelago to the south. Considered the most important natural passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, the strait is approximately 570 km long and 2 km wide at its narrowest point. In 1520, the Spanish expedition of the Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan, after whom the strait is named, became the first Europeans to discover it.

February 17 is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 317 days remain until the end of the year.