colonial Peruvian history, and for strengthening the independence of Peru and the Spanish-South American. During colonial times, stones that were used to build various buildings like the old Presidio of Callao and the Royal Fortress Felipe were extracted from the quarries. It was also, eventually, home base for several English and Dutch pirates, as Francis Drake and Jacques l'Hermite, who raided Callao. The latter died of plague along with some of his men and was buried on the island. In 1866, in republican times, the Spanish Armada retreated to San Lorenzo after their defeat by Peruvian forces in the Battle of Callao, on 2 May. There the Spanish repaired their ships and buried their dead before leaving the Peruvian coast. Charles Darwin explored the island in 1835 looking at the geology and nature. Subsequently, between 1906 and 1907, Max Uhle made the first excavations at the southern tip of the island, finding metal objects and mummies in a pre-Hispanic cemetery in the Caleta de la Cruz, that corresponds to the end of Intermediate and Late Horizon (AD 900 to 1.532). In 1912 President Guillermo Billinghurst raised the proposal of building a dyke across the sea to Callao, an initial study being conducted by Dutch engineer J. Kraus in 1914. In 1958, the proposal was raised again by the Danish firm Christian & Nielsen, who put together a project that involved the transfer to the island of the fishing port and the creation of a new commercial port. The project did not materialize because of financial problems, lack of potable water and the impact that would have been caused on the island's wildlife. In the first half of the 1990s, the naval base located on the island served as a temporary prison for the recently captured then leaders of the insurgent groups Shining Path and MRTA (Abimael Guzmán and Víctor Polay, respectively), as maximum security prisons were built for them. In February 2010 the National Institute of Culture declared twenty existing archaeological monuments on the island "Cultural Patrimony of the Nation". Future development The future San Lorenzo is the subject of ongoing debate. With vast potential for development, a popular suggestion is to link San Lorenzo to the mainland by building a bridge to the nearby La Punta peninsula. This would allow development of the island as a tourist destination and as a megaport and airport similarly to Valparaíso. Opponents of