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.