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Queen Charlotte Sound is the easternmost of the main sounds of the Marlborough Sounds, in New Zealand's South Island. It is, like the other sounds, a drowned valley, and like the majority of its neighbours it runs southwest to northeast before flowing into Cook Strait.
The town of Picton, the northern terminus of the South Island's main railway and State Highway networks, lies at the head of the Sound. Other settlements by the sound are small and isolated - often simply individual properties. Due to the rugged nature of he coast, for many of these access is by boat only.
To the east of the sound lies Arapawa Island and the Tory Channel. Interisland ferries use both Tory Channel and Queen Charlotte sound on their journeys between Picton and Wellington in the North Island.
Parallel to Queen Charlotte Sound to the northwest lies Kenepuru Sound, an arm of Pelorus Sound, Marlborough's other main sound. Some of the small side arms of the two sounds are only hundreds of metres apart, but are separated by a steep serrated range of hills. Not surprisingly, one of the settlements on this stretch of coast is called Portage, named for the simplest method of passing between the two sounds.
It was from a hill on Arapawa Island in 1770 that Captain James Cook first saw the sea passage from the Pacific Ocean to the Tasman Sea, which was named Cook Strait. This discovery banished the fond notion of geographers that there existed a great southern continent.
The area was a base for whaling throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries, notably at Perano Head on Arapawa Island.
Queen Charlotte Sound has calm water and is popular for sailing - a marked contrast to the notorious waters of Cook Strait. Many ships have been wrecked close to the entrance to the Sound, most notably in recent years the Russian cruise liner Mikhail Lermontov, which sank in 1986 in Port Gore after striking rocks. One life was lost in the incident.
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