San Telmo (ship)

San Telmo ("Saint Peter Gonzalez" or "Saint Erasmus of Formiae") was a Spanish 74-gun ship of the line, launched in 1788.

In 1819 the San Telmo commanded by Captain Rosendo Porlier was the flagship of a Spanish naval squadron bound for Callao (Peru) to reinforce colonial forces there fighting the independence movements in Spanish America. Damaged by severe weather in the Drake Passage, south of Cape Horn, it sank in September 1819.

The 644 officers, soldiers and seamen lost on board the San Telmo were the first people to die in Antarctica, as parts of her wreckage were found months later by the first sealers who reached Livingston Island. Indeed, if somebody of the San Telmo survived to set foot there he would have been the first man in history to reach Antarctica.