Cabot Strait (; french: détroit de Cabot, ) is a strait in eastern

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

approximately 110 kilometres wide between

Cape Ray Cape Ray is a headland located at the southwestern extremity of the island of Newfoundland in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the site of the Cape Ray Lighthouse. It is located opposite Cape North on Cape Breton Island, ...

, Newfoundland and Cape North, Cape Breton Island. It is the widest of the three outlets for the

Gulf of Saint Lawrence , image = Baie de la Tour.jpg , alt = , caption = Gulf of St. Lawrence from Anticosti National Park, Quebec , image_bathymetry = Golfe Saint-Laurent Depths fr.svg , alt_bathymetry = Bathymetry ...

into the

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

, the others being the

Strait of Belle Isle The Strait of Belle Isle (; french: Détroit de Belle Isle ) is a waterway in eastern Canada that separates the Labrador Peninsula from the island of Newfoundland, in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Location The strait is the northern o ...

and Strait of Canso. It is named for the italian explorer Giovanni Caboto. The strait's bathymetry is varied, with the

Laurentian Channel The Laurentian Channel is a deep submarine valley off the coast of eastern Canada in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. The channel is of glacial origin and is the submerged valley of the historic Saint Lawrence River, running from a sharp escarpment ...

creating a deep trench through its centre, and comparatively shallow coastal waters closer to Newfoundland and Cape Breton Island. These bathymetric conditions have been known by mariners to cause

rogue wave Rogue waves (also known as freak waves, monster waves, episodic waves, killer waves, extreme waves, and abnormal waves) are unusually large, unpredictable, and suddenly appearing surface waves that can be extremely dangerous to ships, even to lar ...

s. The steep slope of the Laurentian Channel was the site of a disastrous submarine landslide at the southeastern end of the strait, triggered by the

1929 Grand Banks earthquake The 1929 Grand Banks earthquake (also called the Laurentian Slope earthquake and the South Shore Disaster) occurred on November 18, 1929. The shock had a moment magnitude of 7.2 and a maximum Rossi–Forel intensity of VI (''Strong tremor'') and ...

and leading to a

tsunami A tsunami ( ; from ja, 津波, lit=harbour wave, ) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater exp ...

that devastated communities along Newfoundland's south coast and parts of Cape Breton Island. A strategically important waterway throughout Canadian and Newfoundland history, the strait is also an important international shipping route, being the primary waterway linking the Atlantic with inland ports on the

Great Lakes The Great Lakes, also called the Great Lakes of North America, are a series of large interconnected freshwater lakes in the mid-east region of North America that connect to the Atlantic Ocean via the Saint Lawrence River. There are five lak ...

and St. Lawrence Seaway. The strait is crossed daily by the Marine Atlantic ferry service linking

Channel-Port aux Basques Channel-Port aux Basques is a town at the extreme southwestern tip of Newfoundland fronting on the western end of the Cabot Strait. A Marine Atlantic ferry terminal is located in the town which is the primary entry point onto the island of Newfo ...

, and North Sydney.

Ferries A ferry is a ship, watercraft or amphibious vehicle used to carry passengers, and sometimes vehicles and cargo, across a body of water. A passenger ferry with many stops, such as in Venice, Italy, is sometimes called a water bus or water tax ...

have been operating across the strait since 1898 and a submarine

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

cable was laid in 1856 as part of the

transatlantic telegraph cable Transatlantic telegraph cables were undersea cables running under the Atlantic Ocean for telegraph communications. Telegraphy is now an obsolete form of communication, and the cables have long since been decommissioned, but telephone and data a ...

project. An infamous location in the strait for shipwrecks during the age of sail, St. Paul's Island, came to be referred to as the "Graveyard of the Gulf" (of St. Lawrence). In October 1942, German U-boat ''U-69'' torpedoed and sank the unlit Newfoundland ferry , killing 137 people. Then on 25 November 1944 HMCS ''Shawinigan'' was torpedoed and sunk with all hands on board (91 crew) by ''U-1228''. In 1998, the Cypriot bulk carrier the

MV flare MV ''Flare'' (P3GL2) was a Cypriot-registered bulk carrier that sank with the loss of 21 lives in the Cabot Strait on January 16, 1998. ''Flare'' was en route from Rotterdam to Quebec when she broke in two during severe weather, approximately ...

split in half in the Cabot Strait while sailing from Rotterdam to Quebec with the loss of 21 lives on board.

References

;Notes *

Nautical chart A nautical chart is a graphic representation of a sea area and adjacent coastal regions. Depending on the scale of the chart, it may show depths of water and heights of land ( topographic map), natural features of the seabed, details of the co ...

br>''#4022 - Cabot Strait and approaches / Détroit de Cabot et les approches)''
published by Canadian Hydrographic Service, 17 January 2003 {{Authority control Straits of Newfoundland and Labrador Straits of Nova Scotia Straits of the Atlantic Ocean Borders of Newfoundland and Labrador Borders of Nova Scotia Canada–Saint Pierre and Miquelon border