Dampier Strait

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Dampier Strait and Vitiaz Strait are a pair of straits between New Guinea and New Britain, linking the Bismarck Sea to the north with the Solomon Sea to the south. The Vitiaz Strait is the water to the west of Long Island (or Pono) in the centre of the channel; the Dampier Strait lies to the east.

Long Island was charted in 1643 by Abel Tasman but he mistook it for part of the New Guinea mainland and he did not enter either strait. The Dampier Strait is named after the first European to sail through it, British navigator William Dampier in 1700 in HMS Roebuck. The Vitiaz Strait commemorates a Russian corvette which sailed through it in 1872.

Control of the strait was important in the New Guinea campaign of World War II; the Battle of the Bismarck Sea was fought here in March 1943.

 

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