Prince William Sound

Prince William Sound is a sound of the Gulf of Alaska on the south coast of the U.S. state of Alaska. It is located on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula. Its largest port is Valdez, at the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System. Other settlements on the sound, which contains numerous small islands, include Cordova and Whittier plus the Alaska native villages of Chenega and Tatitlek.James Cook entered Prince William Sound in 1778 and named it Sandwich Sound, after his patron the Earl of Sandwich. The Sound was named in 1778 to honour George III's third son Prince William Henry, then aged 13 and serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. In 1793, Alexander Andreyevich Baranov founded port Voskresensk in the sound, which he called Chugach Bay. The first three-masted ship, Phoenix, was the first ship built by the Russians in America.