Wales Island (British Columbia)

Wales Island (British Columbia)

Wales Island is an island on the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, situated east of the Dixon Entrance at the entrance to Portland Inlet.

35 square miles (91 km2) in area, Wales Island is 30 miles (48 km) north of the port city of Prince Rupert, and 55 miles (89 km) south-east of Ketchikan, Alaska.

Wales Island is bounded on the north by the Pearse Canal and Wales Passage, and by Tongass Passage and Portland Inlet to the south. The international boundary between Alaska and British Columbia bisects Pearse Canal over a distance of 25 miles (40 km), such that the view from the north-west shore of Wales Island looks out over Alaska, specifically, Fillmore Island in the Misty Fjords National Monument. Within Canada, Pearse Island lies to the northeast.

In August 1793, during his exploration of the west coast of North America in HMS Discovery, Captain George Vancouver named Wales Point, at the entrance to Portland Inlet, after William Wales, master of the Royal Mathematical School at Christ's Hospital, London. Both Wales and Vancouver had accompanied Captain James Cook on his second circumnavigation of the globe in HMS Resolution, 1772-75. At the time, George Vancouver was a young midshipman, and William Wales was the ship’s astronomer. Vancouver later credited Wales with teaching him the necessary navigational skills which enabled his own explorations of the Pacific region in the early 1790s. Vancouver also accompanied Captain Cook on his third and final voyage, 1776-79.

In 1871, an official at the British Hydrographic Office named Wales Island in association with the point of land named 78 years earlier by Captain Vancouver.