Smith Sound

Smith Sound

The Smith Sound is an uninhabited Arctic seaway between Greenland and Ellesmere Island, Canada's northernmost island. It connects Baffin Bay with the Kane Basin and is part of the Nares Strait. The now-abandoned settlements of Etah and Annoatok were located on the Greenland side of the strait. Europeans first visited the area in 1616, when the Discovery, led by Captain Robert Bylot and piloted by William Baffin, entered the region. The sound was named originally Sir Thomas Smith's Bay. By the 1750s, it was regularly shown on maps as Sir Thomas Smith's Sound, although no further exploration of the area was recorded until John Ross's expedition in 1818. By then it was known simply as Smith Sound.