Connecting Breaksea Sound and Dusky Sound is Acheron Passage. The entrance is equally grand and serene. The channel’s naming rights were a bit choppier. Explorer Captain James Cook called this waterway North Entrance to Dusky Bay. Yet his third lieutenant Richard Pickersgill named it Resolution Passage after their ship, the HMS Resolution. Neither name was lasting. The honors went to John Stokes in 1851 while he was captain of the HM Acheron. The 100 man crew of this 150 foot surveying ship charted the west coast of New Zealand from 1848 to 1855.
