Double-hulled tanker after 6 July 1993 to be fitted with double hulls, or an alternative design approved by IMO". However, in the aftermath of the Erika incident of the coast off France in December 1999, members of IMO adopted a revised schedule for the phase-out of single-hull tankers, which came into effect on 1 September 2003, with further amendments validated on 5 April 2005. After the Exxon Valdez oil spill disaster, when that ship grounded on Bligh Reef outside the port of Valdez, Alaska in 1989, the US Government required all new oil tankers built for use between US ports to be
Prince William Sound 1778 to honour George III's third son Prince William Henry, then aged 13 and serving as a midshipman in the Royal Navy. In 1793, Alexander Andreyevich Baranov founded port Voskresensk in the sound, which he called Chugach Bay. The first three-masted ship, "Phoenix", was the first ship built by the Russians in America. A 1964 tsunami, a result of the Good Friday earthquake, killed a number of Chugach villagers in the coastal village of Chenega and destroyed the town of Valdez. In 1989, the oil tanker "Exxon Valdez" ran aground on Bligh Reef after leaving Valdez, causing a large oil