Hinchinbrook Bay

Hinchinbrook Island guards an entrance to Prince William Sound, its shores facing both the sheltered waters within and the Gulf of Alaska outside. The Chugach Sugpiaq knew the island as Khtagalyuk; the settlement of Nuchek lay at Port Etches on its western side. Captain James Cook named the island in 1778, during his voyage along the Alaskan coast.

In 1792 Yakutat Tlingit warriors fought Russians and Kodiak Sugpiaq led by Alexander Baranov on the island, possibly in retaliation for an earlier Chugach raid. Russian fur companies subsequently established posts here. In 1797 Baranov visited Fort Konstantinovsk, built by a rival company, and many of its men joined his own enterprise. The entrance to the sound had become a meeting place of competing traders and distinct Indigenous peoples.