The Bussol Strait (Russian: Proliv Bussol), known in Japan as the North Urup Channel (北得撫水道, Kita Uruppu Suidō), is a wide strait that separates the islands of Broutona and Chirpoy to the west from Simushir to the east.
The strait was a popular route in the 1840s for American whaleships entering[2] and exiting[3] the Sea of Okhotsk on their way to and from cruises for right whales.
[4] Among the few to use it during that period was the ship Susan (349 tons), of Nantucket, which was stove by ice and sank in the strait on the night of 27–28 April 1853 while attempting to enter the Sea of Okhotsk.
The remaining twenty-five crew members crowded into two whaleboats and reached Urup on the afternoon of 29 April.
Early on the morning of 14 May 1855 the ships Enterprise (291 tons), under Captain Stephen G. Russell, and King Fisher (425 tons), under Captain Martin Palmer, both of New Bedford, were wrecked on a reef on the northeast end of Urup within a quarter mile of each other while attempting to enter the Sea of Okhotsk via Bussol Strait.