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The viceroyalty of Peru was far from being a territory that projected its influence only on the Atlantic or the interior of the Andes. Since the sixteenth century, there was an interest in being present in strategic territories such as the transoceanic passage between the Atlantic and the Pacific. Mariners, cosmographers, and other viceregal agents intervened in this search, which explains the continental projection, if the not planetary of the empire. Pedro Sarmiento de Gamboa was one of those persons who left an important testimony about the geopolitical interests of the Peruvian Viceroyalty over the Strait of Magellan, as well as the inevitable challenges that men of the navy and of the government faced in their watchword.