Caswell Sound

Caswell Sound is a sound of the South Island of New Zealand. It is one of the sounds that form the coast of Fiordland.

The sound is located between George Sound and Charles Sound, on the central Fiordland coast. It is 16 kilometres in length, and extends in a roughly west-northwestern direction. The sound is relatively straight except near its mouth, when it turns northward, and has no major arms or indentations. a small island, Styles Island, sits close to the southern shore at the sound's entrance to the Tasman Sea.

A straight ridge of peaks lies parallel with the sound's south shore, between it and the valley of the Juno River. The highest point of these peaks, at 1,485 metres (4,872 ft), lies just to the west of the small mountain lake, Lake Shirley, which flows into the sound over the Shirley Falls. Mountains also stand against the northern shore of the sound, several of them rising above 1,200 metres (3,900 ft).

Several small rivers enter the sound along its southern and northern shores, but the main river feeding the sound is the Stillwater River, which flows into the sound's eastern end. Shortly before entering the sound it flows into the northeastern edge of Lake Marchant, exiting to the sound at the lake's northwest. Lake Marchant is also fed by the Large Burn, which enters the late's southern end.

A. W. Reed lists four plausible origins for the sound's name in his seminal Place Names of New Zealand (1975). The most favoured of these possibilities is that it was named for Jim Caswell, a half-caste Māori or Australian Aborigine guide to an early 19th-century sealing party. Reed does, however, also detail correspondence he had received which suggested that Royal Navy Commander William Caswell was in charge of a survey of the sounds during the 1830s and that other place names in the area make his a likely origin of the name. Confusing things further is the presence of two other naval officers with the surname Caswell George and Thomas) who had visited the area.

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