Drake Passage

The Drake Passage is the crossing Bernadette expects to face on the voyage from Ushuaia to the Antarctic Peninsula. Its significance in the available account is personal as well as geographical: fear of seasickness becomes one reason Bernadette gives for wanting to avoid the family trip, turning the passage into a point of conflict between her and Elgin.

Route and Setting

The captain’s report identifies the cruise as a voyage from Ushuaia, Argentina, to the Antarctic Peninsula. The Drake Passage is the crossing named in Elgin’s later confrontation with Bernadette, linking the planned journey’s route to her expressed anxiety about making it.

Bernadette’s Fear of the Crossing

During the intervention, Elgin challenges Bernadette’s plan to have her wisdom teeth removed, which she had arranged while concealing her intentions from him and Bee. He points out that seasickness could be addressed with a scopolamine patch, contrasting that option with the risks of having four teeth pulled. In his account, her fear of the Drake Passage is not an isolated practical concern: it is bound up with her effort to escape the voyage and with the secrecy surrounding that effort.

Narrative Significance

The passage appears not through a description of the sea but through an argument about what Bernadette will do to avoid crossing it. That contrast makes the Drake Passage a pressure point in the family’s conflict: an actual leg of the Antarctic itinerary becomes evidence in Elgin’s accusation that Bernadette has withheld important decisions from him and Bee.