I.

Introduction

Northwest Passage, navigable sea route along the northern coast of North America, connecting the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean via the marine waterways of northern Canada and the coastal waters off northern Alaska.

Efforts to discover a route through or around North America began in the 1490s with the voyages of John Cabot, an Italian navigator sailing in the service of England. His 1497 expedition reached the island of Newfoundland, off the eastern coast of present-day Canada. At that time, Spain controlled the southern sea routes to Asia. Cabot’s expeditions stoked the desire to find a northern passage to provide other European powers a trade route between Europe and Asia. Expeditions were financed by English and Dutch trading companies, wealthy individuals, and later the British Royal Navy. However, the passage eluded numerous explorers who braved treacherous ice-choked waters and freezing temperatures in their search. In the process, they charted the Arctic archipelago as their valiant attempts took them through the maze of islands, straits, and bays north of the North American continent.

II.

Foiled Attempts to Find the Passage

The search for the Northwest Passage began in earnest in 1576, when English navigator Sir Martin Frobisher was placed in charge of an expedition specifically to seek a sea route through the Arctic. He sailed as far north as Frobisher Bay in Baffin Island and erroneously believed the bay to be a strait between two headlands leading into the Pacific Ocean. Ten years later John Davis sailed even farther north, finding the strait later named Davis Strait.

In 1610 English explorer Henry Hudson set out on his fourth, and final, voyage in search of a northern sea route. In his new ship, the Discovery, he discovered the passage into what became known as Hudson Bay. Hoping that it would yield the long-sought Northwest Passage, Hudson explored the bay until his crew mutinied and sent him off in a small boat to die adrift in the freezing waters.

Most of the English expeditions to the area during the 17th century became bogged down in an ultimately fruitless attempt to find a passage by locating an outlet to the Pacific Ocean from the western shore of Hudson Bay. These included an expedition led by Luke Fox, who explored Foxe Channel, north of Hudson Bay, in 1631. One exception, however, was an expedition led by William Baffin and Robert Bylot in 1616. It pushed through Davis Strait and reached as far as latitude 77°45′ north, at the entrance to Smith Sound between Ellesmere Island and Greenland.

During the 1700s British expeditions were sent to the Pacific in the hope of finding a western entrance to the Northwest Passage. The third voyage of Captain James Cook (from 1776 to 1779) was specifically undertaken to discover a passage this way. The expedition headed north into uncharted territory in the Pacific Ocean and sailed along the west coast of Canada and Alaska. Twice Cook explored inlets that offered some promise of a Northwest Passage, but to no avail. Although the expedition had failed to discover a northern sea route, it added detailed charts of the North Pacific to Cook’s achievements.

In the early 19th century the British resumed the search for the long-sought Northwest Passage through the Arctic archipelago. Notable explorations included those of Sir John Ross, whose second expedition launched in 1829 was notable for discovering the location of the magnetic North Pole (which changes over time), the Boothia Peninsula, and King William Island. In 1845 the British Royal Navy mounted a lavish expedition to find the Northwest Passage under the command of Sir John Franklin. His large expedition vanished, leading to an intensive decade-long series of rescue expeditions that failed to find any sign of the expedition.

III.

First Successful Transits of the Passage

One expedition to find Franklin finally proved the existence of a Northwest Passage. This expedition (1850-1854), led by Irish naval officer and explorer Robert McClure, negotiated much of the passage starting from the Pacific Ocean. However, McClure had to abandon his ship midway. Rescued via the Atlantic route, he and his crew completed the Northwest Passage in 1854, but not by a single voyage in a single ship.

Finally, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen led the first successful transit of the entire Northwest Passage in a single ship (1903-1906). Sailing in the small sloop Gjöa with a crew of seven, Amundsen navigated the passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific. He sailed up the west coast of Greenland, through Baffin Bay and Lancaster Sound, and around the many small islands of the Canadian Arctic to King William Island. There he spent two winters calculating the exact position of the magnetic North Pole. On the island he also discovered some of the remains of the vanished Franklin expedition, including the melancholy memoirs of Franklin’s last days. Franklin and his men had frozen to death after their ships became trapped in shifting ice. By the summer of 1905 Amundsen had reached the mouth of the Mackenzie River. When the Gjöa became ice-bound, he traveled 800 km (500 mi) overland to the telegraph at Fort Eagle, Alaska, to announce his success in navigating the Northwest Passage.

Interest in the Northwest Passage was revived in the 1960s after the discovery of large oil deposits off northern Alaska. In September 1969 the 115,000-ton icebreaking tanker SS Manhattan of the United States became the first large vessel to negotiate the passage.

In 2007 scientists announced that satellite images showed that the M’Clure Strait, the most direct route through the Northwest Passage, was ice-free in August of that year. This was the first time that the passage has been fully open and navigable. The Arctic sea ice cover in the summer of 2007 was also the lowest on record. Experts on global warming have forecast the opening of the Northwest Passage as the Arctic warms and sea ice thins. However, the 2007 M’Clure occurrence indicates that the process could be happening much faster than previously predicted, opening the Northwest Passage to maritime traffic and exploration. Canada has made claims to the Northwest Passage sea route, but the United States views the region as part of international waters.