The Icy Strait is a strait in the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska, at about 58°16′41″N135°38′48″W / 58.27806°N 135.64667°W .
The Icy Strait is a strait in the Alexander Archipelago in southeastern Alaska, at about 58°16′41″N135°38′48″W / 58.27806°N 135.64667°W .
Icy Strait separates Chichagof Island to the south and the Alaska mainland to the north. The strait is 64 km (40 mi; 35 nmi) from its west side at the intersection of the Cross Sound and Glacier Bay to its east side at Chatham Strait and the Lynn Canal. The two largest islands in the strait are Pleasant Island and Lemesurier Island.
The Cape Spencer Light is an important former lighthouse and remains an active aid to navigation.
The nearby cruise ship destination Icy Strait Point is named in reference to Icy Strait.
At 9:57 p.m. on September 13, 1886, the sidewheel steamer Ancon, a cargo liner, ran aground on an uncharted rock in Icy Strait within 0.5 nautical miles (0.9 km; 0.6 mi) of Point Gustavus while attempting to enter Glacier Bay. After three hours, she floated free on the rising tide at 1:00 a.m. on September 14, and her captain beached her on a sandy shore about 1.5 nautical miles (2.8 km; 1.7 mi) from the rock to prevent her from sinking. [1] [2] She was refloated on October 2, 1886, and, after initial repairs, run ashore again in Bartlett Cove for additional repairs. She finally proceeded to Juneau, Alaska, for permanent repairs. [3] A United States Coast and Geodetic Survey team sent to chart the rock in November 1886 named it "Ancon Rock," [4] [5] and a buoy moored at the site now warns ships of the submerged Ancon Rock. [6] Ancon returned to service in mid-December 1886. [7]
The cruise ship Empress of the North ran aground near Rocky Island [8] and took on some water there on May 14, 2007, causing the evacuation of her passengers. None were injured.
USS Oregon (BB-3) was the third and final member of the Indiana class of pre-dreadnought battleships built for the United States Navy in the 1890s. The three ships were built as part of a modernization program aimed at strengthening the American fleet to prepare for a possible conflict with a European navy. Designed for short-range operations in defense of the United States, the three Indiana-class ships had a low freeboard and carried a main battery of four 13-inch (330 mm) guns in a pair of gun turrets. Oregon and her sister ships were the first modern battleships built for the United States, though they suffered from significant stability and seakeeping problems owing to their small size and insufficient freeboard.
Hoonah is a largely Tlingit community on Chichagof Island, located in Alaska's panhandle in the southeast region of the state. It is 30 miles (48 km) west of Juneau, across the Alaskan Inside Passage. Hoonah is the only first-class city on Chichagof Island, the 109th-largest island in the world and the 5th-largest island in the U.S. At the 2020 census the population was 931, up from 760 in 2010. In the summer the population can swell to over 1,300 depending on fishing, boating, hiking and hunting conditions.
USS Makassar Strait (CVE-91) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy. She was named after the Battle of Makassar Strait, an early naval engagement to the east of Borneo. Launched in March 1944, and commissioned in April, she served in support of the Battle of Okinawa. Postwar, she participated in Operation Magic Carpet. She was decommissioned in August 1946, when she was mothballed in the Pacific Reserve Fleet. Ultimately, she was used as a target, and she was accidentally run aground on San Nicolas Island in April 1961. Her wreckage survived until at least 1965.
USS Kadashan Bay (CVE-76) was a Casablanca-class escort carrier of the United States Navy. It was named after Kadashan Bay, located within Chichagof Island. The bay in turn was named after Paul K. Kadashan, an Alaskan Indian who established a homestead incorporating the bay in 1915. Launched in December 1943, and commissioned in January 1944, she served in support of the Mariana and Palau Islands campaign, the Battle off Samar, and the Invasion of Lingayen Gulf. Postwar, she participated in Operation Magic Carpet. She was decommissioned in June 1946, when she was mothballed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet. Ultimately, she was sold for scrapping in February 1960.
USS Glacier (AGB-4) was a U.S. Navy, then U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker which served in the first through fifteenth Operation Deep Freeze expeditions. Glacier was the first icebreaker to make her way through the frozen Bellingshausen Sea, and most of the topography in the area is named for her crew members. When built, Glacier had the largest capacity single armature DC motors ever installed on a ship. Glacier was capable of breaking ice up to 20 feet (6.1 m) thick, and of continuous breaking of 4-foot (1.2 m) thick ice at 3 knots.
The second USS Albatross, often seen as USFC Albatross in scientific literature citations, was an iron-hulled, twin-screw steamship in the United States Navy and reputedly the first research ship ever built especially for marine research.
USS Bear was a dual steam-powered and sailing ship built with six-inch (15.2 cm)-thick sides which had a long life in various cold-water and ice-filled environments. She was a forerunner of modern icebreakers and had a diverse service life. According to the United States Coast Guard official website, Bear is described as "probably the most famous ship in the history of the Coast Guard."
NOAA Ship John N. Cobb was a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel in commission from 1970 to 2008. She was named for John Nathan Cobb and was the oldest commissioned ship in the NOAA fleet when she was decommissioned, having previously served in the United States Department of the Interior′s Fish and Wildlife Service from 1950 to 1956 and in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service′s Bureau of Commercial Fisheries from 1956 to 1970 as US FWS John N. Cobb.
USCGC Staten Island (WAGB-278) was a United States Coast Guard Wind-class icebreaker. Laid down on 9 June 1942 and launched on 28 December 1942, the ship was commissioned on 26 February 1944, and almost immediately afterward transferred to the Soviet Union, under the Lend Lease program, under the name Severny Veter, which loosely translates as Northwind, until 19 December 1951. When returned to the United States Navy, she was designated USS Northwind until 15 April 1952, when she was renamed Staten Island to distinguish her from her successor USCGC Northwind (WAGB-282) which had been laid down shortly after she was lent to the Soviet Union. The ship was transferred to the U.S. Coast Guard as USCGC Staten Island in February 1965, and served until November 1974, before being scrapped.
The American Empress is a 360-foot (110 m) diesel-electric powered paddle-wheeler that was formerly operated by Majestic America Line and named the Empress of the North. She was built in 2002 at the Nichols Brothers Boat Builders shipyard on Whidbey Island, in the U.S. state of Washington, for $50 million and debuted as a cruise ship in 2003. She is listed as accommodating 223 guests, and originally cruised Alaska's Inside Passage, the Pacific Northwest, and the Columbia River. While being operated by Majestic America Line, the ship was decorated with a 19th century Russian theme, but with Alaskan touches in the form of carvings and masks.
Spirit of Glacier Bay, formerly Spirit of Nantucket and Nantucket Clipper, and now called the Chichagof Dream is a small cruise ship that was owned and operated by Cruise West until 2010. She is 207 feet long, carries up to 102 passengers and approximately 28 crew. It was built in 1984 at Jeffersonville, Indiana for Clipper Cruise Lines by Jeffboat Corporation, and operated on the East Coast of North America, from the Caribbean Sea to the Canadian Maritimes and into the Great Lakes as far as Chicago. In 2006, Nantucket Clipper, along with fleet-mate Yorktown Clipper, was purchased by Seattle-based Cruise West. Nantucket Clipper was renamed Spirit of Nantucket at this time. In 2006 and 2007 she continued operating on her usual routes.
USS McCulloch, previously USRC McCulloch and USCGC McCulloch, was a ship that served as a United States Revenue Cutter Service cutter from 1897 to 1915, as a United States Coast Guard Cutter from 1915 to 1917, and as a United States Navy patrol vessel in 1917. She saw combat during the Spanish–American War during the Battle of Manila Bay and patrolled off the United States West Coast during World War I. In peacetime, she saw extensive service in the waters off the U.S. West Coast. She sank in 1917 after colliding with another steamer.
The MS Explorer or MV Explorer was a Liberian-registered cruise ship, the first vessel of that kind used specifically to sail the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean. She was the first cruise ship to sink there, after striking an iceberg on 23 November 2007. All passengers and crew were rescued.
USS Adams was a screw gunboat and the lead ship of the Adams class. She was named for Founding Father and second president of the United States John Adams.
Galilee was a brigantine, built in 1891, designed by Matthew Turner. She started on the packet line between San Francisco and Tahiti and was reckoned a very fast ship. In 1905 she was chartered by the Carnegie Institution's Department of Terrestrial Magnetism and converted into a magnetic observatory. She was used to make observations of Earth's magnetic field on three cruises over a period of three years from 1905 to 1908 in the Pacific Ocean.
USCGC Liberty (WPB-1334) is an Island-class cutter of the United States Coast Guard. She spent her first 33 years of service homeported in Juneau, Alaska where she patrolled territorial waters, including the Inside Passage. In 2016 she won the Hopley Yeaton Cutter Excellence Award for outstanding operational and humanitarian achievements. In 2022 she was reassigned to Valdez, Alaska.
The SS Northwestern, originally SS Oriziba, was a passenger and freight steamship launched in 1889 by the Delaware River Iron Ship Building and Engine Works, Chester, Pennsylvania which spent most of its career in service in the waters of the Territory of Alaska. The ship from early in its career had a reputation for trouble, and was frequently involved in groundings, collisions with other ships, and with port facilities. She first served as a transport in the West Indies as Oriziba, and was acquired by the Northwestern Steamship Company in 1906, sailed around Cape Horn, and renamed Northwestern. For the next thirty years she worked along the Alaska coast, transporting people, mail, and goods, as well as ore from mining operations at Kennecott.
Ancon was an ocean-going wooden sidewheel steamship built in San Francisco in 1867. She carried both passengers and freight. In her early career she was a ferry in Panama and then ran between Panama and San Francisco. Later she began coastal runs between Sand Diego and San Francisco. Her last route was Port Townsend, Washington to Alaska. Today she is more notable for her disasters than her routine voyages. Ancon Rock in Icy Strait, Alaska is the site of her 1886 grounding. Her final wreck, in 1889 in Naha Bay, near Loring, Alaska was commemorated by Albert Bierstadt. His painting, "Wreck of the 'Ancon' in Loring Bay, Alaska" now hangs in the Museum of Fine Art in Boston.
Idaho was a wooden steamship built for Pacific Coast passenger and freight service. She was launched in 1866 and wrecked in 1889. She was one of the first ocean-going steamships to provide regular service to the northwest coast of North America.
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