On the night of 24 March 1989, the Exxon Valdez left the port of Valdez, Alaska
and was steaming through the Valdez Narrows on its way to the open waters of
Prince William Sound. The tanker left the normal shipping lanes to avoid icebergs
from the nearby Columbia Glacier and ran into the submerged rocks of Bligh Reef;
its crew failed to realize how far off the shipping lanes the tanker had strayed.] Oil
compartments ruptured, releasing 11 million gallons of Prudhoe Bay crude oil into
the Prince William Sound. It was the largest tanker spill in U.S. waters and to the
public it was one of the major environmental disasters in U.S. history.