Admiralty Inlet is a strait in the

U.S. state In the United States, a state is a constituent political entity, of which there are 50. Bound together in a political union, each state holds governmental jurisdiction over a separate and defined geographic territory where it shares its sove ...

Washington Washington commonly refers to: * Washington (state), United States * Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States ** A metonym for the federal government of the United States ** Washington metropolitan area, the metropolitan area centered o ...

connecting the eastern end of the

Strait of Juan de Fuca The Strait of Juan de Fuca (officially named Juan de Fuca Strait in Canada) is a body of water about long that is the Salish Sea's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The international boundary between Canada and the United States runs down the centre ...

Puget Sound Puget Sound ( ) is a sound of the Pacific Northwest, an inlet of the Pacific Ocean, and part of the Salish Sea. It is located along the northwestern coast of the U.S. state of Washington. It is a complex estuarine system of interconnected ma ...

. It lies between

Whidbey Island Whidbey Island (historical spellings Whidby, Whitbey, or Whitby) is the largest of the islands composing Island County, Washington, in the United States, and the largest island in Washington State. (The other large island is Camano Island, ...

and the northeastern part of the

Olympic Peninsula The Olympic Peninsula is a large arm of land in western Washington that lies across Puget Sound from Seattle, and contains Olympic National Park. It is bounded on the west by the Pacific Ocean, the north by the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and th ...

Boundaries

It is generally considered to be the northern part of Puget Sound's Main Basin. Its northern boundary is defined as a line running between Point Wilson and Point Partridge, and it extends south to the southern end of

and

Point No Point Point No Point is an outcropping of land on the northeast point of the Kitsap Peninsula in Washington (U.S. state), Washington, the United States. It was the location of the signing of the Point No Point Treaty and is the site of the Point No Poi ...

on the

Kitsap Peninsula The Kitsap Peninsula () lies west of Seattle across Puget Sound, in Washington state in the Pacific Northwest. Hood Canal separates the peninsula from the Olympic Peninsula on its west side. The peninsula, a.k.a. "Kitsap", encompasses all of Kit ...

, where it joins the Central Basin of Puget Sound's Main Basin. Admiralty Inlet's area is , with a volume of . Its shoreline is in length. Its mean depth is .Features Of Puget Sound Region: Oceanography And Physical Processes
Chapter 3 of th

King County Department of Natural Resources, Seattle, Washington, 2001. Though only wide at the narrowest point (between the Point Wilson and Admiralty Head Lighthouse, Admiralty Head lighthouses), it is through this passage that nearly all the seawater flows into and from

during daily

tidal Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (servic ...

variations. Tidal currents can reach six

knot A knot is an intentional complication in cordage which may be practical or decorative, or both. Practical knots are classified by function, including hitches, bends, loop knots, and splices: a ''hitch'' fastens a rope to another object; a ' ...

s in the area northeast of Point Wilson. All sea vessels must pass through Admiralty Inlet to enter or leave Puget Sound, except those small enough to use

Deception Pass Deception Pass is a strait separating Whidbey Island from Fidalgo Island, in the northwest part of the U.S. state of Washington. It connects Skagit Bay, part of Puget Sound, with the Strait of Juan de Fuca. A pair of bridges known collectivel ...

Swinomish Channel The Swinomish Channel is an long salt-water channel in Washington state, United States, which connects Skagit Bay to the south, and Padilla Bay to the north, separating Fidalgo Island from mainland Skagit County. The Swinomish Channel is the s ...

. This fact led to the selection of Port Townsend on the Quimper Peninsula as the official port of entry for the Puget Sound region during the early days of commerce in the area. It also led to the federal decision in the late 1890s to construct

Fort Worden Fort Worden Historical State Park is located in Port Townsend, Washington, on originally known as Fort Worden, a United States Army Coast Artillery Corps base constructed to protect Puget Sound from invasion by sea. Fort Worden was named after U ...

, Fort Casey, and

Fort Flagler Fort Flagler State Park is a public recreation area that occupies the site of Fort Flagler, a former United States Army fort at the northern end of Marrowstone Island in Washington. The state park occupies at the entrance to Admiralty Inlet and ...

around Admiralty Inlet as a "Triangle of Fire" for the protection of Puget Sound from a hostile fleet. The first Europeans to find and map Admiralty Inlet were the Spanish of the 1790 expedition of

Manuel Quimper Manuel Quimper Benítez del Pino (c. 1757 – April 2, 1844) was a Spanish Peruvian explorer, cartographer, naval officer, and colonial official. He participated in charting the Strait of Juan de Fuca and the Sandwich Islands in the late 18th ...

. It was Quimper's pilot, Juan Carrasco, who sighted the inlet. Thinking it was a bay he named it ''Ensenada de Caamaño'', after the Spanish naval officer

Jacinto Caamaño Jacinto Caamaño Moraleja (1759–September 8, 1829 Guayaquil) was the leader of the last great Spanish exploration of Alaska (then Russian America) and the Coast of British Columbia. He was a Knight of the Military Order of Calatrava. Early life ...

. Two years later Admiralty Inlet was given its present name by George Vancouver, after his ultimate commanders, the Board of Admiralty. The Spanish name was later given to

Camano Island Camano Island is a large island in Possession Sound, a section of Puget Sound. It is part of Island County, Washington, and is located between Whidbey Island and the mainland (Snohomish County) by the Saratoga Passage to the west and Port Susa ...

Present day

Today a great deal of maritime freight traffic passes through Admiralty Inlet to the major shipping ports at

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

and Tacoma, and of

United States Navy The United States Navy (USN) is the maritime service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the eight uniformed services of the United States. It is the largest and most powerful navy in the world, with the estimated tonnage ...

vessels to the Naval facilities in Puget Sound. The Keystone- Port Townsend run of the

Washington State Ferries Washington State Ferries (WSF) is a government agency that operates automobile and passenger ferry service in the U.S. state of Washington as part of the Washington State Department of Transportation. It runs ten routes serving 20 terminals loc ...

crosses the inlet and serves as a link for State Route 20. A

tidal power Tidal power or tidal energy is harnessed by converting energy from tides into useful forms of power, mainly electricity using various methods. Although not yet widely used, tidal energy has the potential for future electricity generation. Ti ...

project was canceled due to costs of monitoring wildlife.

References

External links

* {{coord, 48, 09, 44.44, N, 122, 43, 28.55, W, display=title Bodies of water of Island County, Washington Bodies of water of Jefferson County, Washington Straits of Kitsap County, Washington Straits of Washington (state) Puget Sound