Inside Passage

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Lore & Background

During the Klondike Gold Rush the passage was one of the sea routes from Seattle and California, carrying American prospectors northward. Today, the Inside Passage is heavily travelled by cruise ships, freighters, tugs with tows, fishing craft, pleasure craft, and ships of the Alaska Marine Highway, BC Ferries, and Washington State Ferries systems. Coast Guard vessels of both Canada and the United States patrol and transit in the Passage. Navigating the Inside Passage can be difficult due to often uncertain weather, large tidal range, fast or unpredictable currents, and infrequent safe anchorages. Captain Warren Good has catalogued some 3,641 shipwrecks along the Alaska portion of the Passage. The Underwater Archeological Society of British Columbia conducts periodic Regional Shipwreck Surveys. During the salmon treaty negotiations in early 1994, Canada concluded that the United States was not responsive to Canada's concerns. Accordingly, on June 15, 1994, Canada imposed a transit fee on all US commercial fishing boats using the Canadian Inside Passage. This fee was eventually lifted through bilateral negotiations. The crisis remained peaceful and there were no violent incidents between US fishing boats and Canadian enforcement officials. In response to the Canadian action, on October 24, 1995, the US Congress passed an amendment to the Fishermen's Protective Act, adding provisions permitting the U.S. government to directly reimburse US fishers for fines and other costs associated with seizures by foreign governments.

Reader's Guide

The Inside Passage is a coastal route for ships and boats along a network of passages which weave through the islands on the Pacific Northwest coast of the North American Fjordland. It is generally accepted that the southernmost point of the Inside Passage is Olympia, Washington, which is also the southernmost point of Puget Sound. The northernmost points of the Passage are Haines and Skagway at the head of the Lynn Canal. British Columbia's 1,125 km (700 mi) portion of the route includes the wide, protected Strait of Georgia between Vancouver Island and the B.C. mainland, the narrow Johnstone Strait and Discovery Passage between Vancouver Island and the mainland, Blackfish Sound at the northern end of Vancouver Island as well as a long stretch of 400 km (250 mi) between islands and reaches or along the wider and more exposed Hecate Strait near Haida Gwaii. Alaska's portion of the Inside Passage extends 500 miles (800 km) from north to south and 100 miles (160 km) from east to west. The area encompasses 1,000 islands and thousands of coves and bays. The Inside Passage is a popular tourism destination. Over 2 million people take cruises each year in this region. Approximately 36,000 recreational cruising boats utilize portions of the Inside Passage route. The nonprofit Marine Exchange of Alaska plots and follows vessel traffic in the Alaskan section of the Inside Passage. British author Jonathan Raban described his journey by boat through the Inside Passage from Seattle to Juneau in his 1999 travelogue Passage to Juneau: A Sea and Its Meanings. In The Curve of Time (1961), Canadian travel writer M. Wylie Blanchet chronicled her travels by boat in the 1920s and 1930s with her five children throughout the Inside Passage waters between Vancouver Island and the mainland.

Did You Know?

• Captain Warren Good has catalogued some 3,641 shipwrecks along the Alaska portion of the Passage.
• During the Klondike Gold Rush the passage was one of the sea routes from Seattle and California, carrying American prospectors northward.
• On June 15, 1994, Canada imposed a transit fee on all US commercial fishing boats using the Canadian Inside Passage.
• The northernmost points of the Passage are Haines and Skagway at the head of the Lynn Canal.
• The Underwater Archeological Society of British Columbia conducts periodic Regional Shipwreck Surveys.