Manhasset Bay, New York, is an embayment

Bay

A bay is an area of water mostly surrounded by land. Bays generally have calmer waters than the surrounding sea, due to the surrounding land blocking some waves and often reducing winds. Bays also exist as an inlet in a lake or pond. A large bay may be called a gulf, a sea, a sound, or a bight...

 in western Long Island

Long Island

Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...

 off Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound is an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, located in the United States between Connecticut to the north and Long Island, New York to the south. The mouth of the Connecticut River at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, empties into the sound. On its western end the sound is bounded by the Bronx...

. Manhasset Bay forms the northeastern boundary of the Great Neck Peninsula

Great Neck, New York

The term Great Neck is commonly applied to a peninsula on the North Shore of Long Island, which includes the village of Great Neck, the village of Great Neck Estates, the village of Great Neck Plaza, and others, as well as an area south of the peninsula near Lake Success and the border of Queens...

 and the southwestern boundary of Cow Neck (Port Washington Peninsula or Manhasset Neck). On the north side of the bay there are three points, Barker Point at the entrance, Plum Point coming the furthest into the Bay, and Tom's Point in the back bay. On the other side, Hewlett Point forms the entrance nearly a mile from Barker Point. Hart Island lies in the Sound just outside the mouth of Manhasset Bay.

The Manhasset Bay area was first inhabited in the 17th century by the Matinecook tribe of Algonquin

Algonquian peoples

The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...

 Indians

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

. Then the Dutch

Netherlands

The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

 and the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 settled around the bay in the 17th century because of the proximity of fish

Fish

Fish are a paraphyletic group of organisms that consist of all gill-bearing aquatic vertebrate animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish, as well as various extinct related groups...

. The Bay was called Schout's Bay by the Dutch, and then Howe's Bay by the English. Subsequently, due to the presence of cattle raising, it came to be called Cow Bay, and the local neck, to the northeast, "Cow Neck". It finally became Manhasset Bay in 1907.

In the 1920s it began to switch from the cow-and-fish industry to support services for commercial boating, as it is considered to be one of the best harbors on Long Island Sound with little tidal current except at the entrance and average tidal displacement of only six feet. By the 1980s it was full of marinas and yacht clubs. The Sands Point Seaplane Base

Sands Point Seaplane Base

Sands Point Seaplane Base is a seaplane landing area located in Manhasset Bay, two miles northwest of the central business district of Port Washington, in Nassau County, New York, USA. During part of the 1930s Sands Point served as the New York base of the Boeing 314....

 on Manhasset Bay was at one time the main airport for passenger service between New York and Europe. At the beginning of the 21st century, it had about 16% of all the marinas and yacht clubs in the whole of Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound

Long Island Sound is an estuary of the Atlantic Ocean, located in the United States between Connecticut to the north and Long Island, New York to the south. The mouth of the Connecticut River at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, empties into the sound. On its western end the sound is bounded by the Bronx...

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