Northwest Passage

This article describes the route through the Canadian Arctic. For other meanings, see Northwest Passage (disambiguation).

The Northwest Passage is a route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through the Arctic archipelago of Canada.

Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, Europeans attempted to discover a commercial sea route north and west around the North American continent. The English called the hypothetical route the Northwest Passage, while the Spanish called it the Strait of Anián. The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America.

First attempts after the Little Ice Age

In 1539, Hernán Cortés commissioned Francisco de Ulloa to sail along the peninsula of Baja California in search of the Strait of Anián. 1576 – 1578 Martin Frobisher undertook three voyages to the Canadian Arctic in order to find the passage. Frobisher Bay, which he discovered, is named after him. In July 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had written a treatise on the discovery of the passage and was a backer of Frobisher's, claimed the territory of Newfoundland for the English crown. On August 8, 1585, the English explorer John Davis entered Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up the river that now bears his name in search of the passage; he later explored the Canadian Arctic and Hudson Bay.

In the first half of the 19th century, parts of the Northwest Passage were explored separately by a number of different expeditions, including voyages by John Ross, William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross; and overland expeditions led by John Franklin, George Back, Peter Warren Dease, Thomas Simpson, and John Rae

Sir John Franklin expedition

''For more information see main article, Sir John Franklin.

In 1845 a well-equipped two-ship expedition led by Sir John Franklin sailed to the Canadian Arctic to chart the final unknown parts of the Northwest Passage. Confidence was high, as there was less than 500 km of unexplored Arctic mainland coast left. When the expedition failed to return, a number of relief expeditions and search parties explored the Canadian Arctic, resulting in final charting of a possible passage. Traces of the expedition have been found, including records that indicate that the ships became ice-locked in 1846 near King William Island, about half way through the passage, and were unable to extricate themselves. Franklin himself died in 1847 and the last of the party in 1848, after abandoning the ships and attempting to escape overland by sledge. While starvation and scurvy contributed to the deaths of the crew, another factor was significant. The expedition took 8000 tins of food which were soldered with lead. The lead contaminated the food, poisoning the crew. They would have become weak and disoriented--later stages of lead poisoning include insanity and death. In 1981, Dr. Owen Beattie, an anthropologist from the University of Alberta found signs of the expedition. This led to further investigations, and the examination of tissue and bone from the mummified bodies of three seamen, exhumed from the permafrost of Beechey Island. Laboratory tests revealed high concentrations of lead in all three bodies.

McClure expedition

During the search for Franklin, a party led by Robert McClure traversed the Northwest Passage from west to east in the years 1850 to 1854, partly by ship and partly by sledge. McClure's ship was trapped in the ice for three winters near Banks Island, at the western end of Viscount Melville Sound. Finally McClure and his party – who were by that time dying of starvation — were found by searchers travelling by sledge from one of the ships of Sir Edward Belcher's expedition, and returned with them to Belcher's ships, which had entered the sound from the east.

Amundsen expedition

The Northwest Passage was not conquered by sea until 1906, when the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed a three-year voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa. At the end of this trip, he walked into the city of Eagle, Alaska, and sent a telegram announcing his success. His route was not commercially practical; in addition to the time taken, some of the waterways were extremely shallow.

Later expeditions

The first single-season passage was not accomplished until 1944, when the Canadian ship St. Roch, a Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner commanded by the Canadian RCMP officer Henry Larsen, made it through to reinforce Canadian sovereignty of the Northwest Passage.

Only one person had ever sailed a ship through the famed Northwest Passage and that was Norwegian Roald Amundsen in 1903-06, from east to west. In 1940, Larsen was the first to sail it from west to east, from Vancouver, Canada to Halifax, Canada. More than once on this trip, it was touch and go as to whether the St. Roch would survive the ravages of the grumbling, shrieking, crashing sea ice. At one point Larsen wondered "if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice." The St. Roch and her crew survived the winter on Boothia Peninsula except for one of the crew. Each of the men on the trip was awarded a medal by Canada's sovereign King George VI in recognition of this magnificent feat of Arctic navigation.

Some believe the real purpose of the voyages of discovery was not to patrol the Arctic searching for evidence of German infiltrators, but rather to protect Canadian interests from the Americans. The Americans were proving to be difficult, heavy-handed allies.

On July 1, 1957, U. S. Coast Guard cutter Storis departed in company with the U. S. Coast Guard Cutters Bramble (WLB-392) and SPAR (WLB-403) to search for a deep draft channel through the Arctic Ocean and to collect hydrographic information. This historic transit ended a 450-year search for the Northwest Passage – a route for large ships across the top of North America. Upon her return to Greenland waters, Storis became the first U.S. registered vessel to circumnavigate the North American continent. Shortly after her return in late 1957, the Storis was reassigned to her new home port of Kodiak, Alaska.

In 1969 the SS Manhattan made the passage, accompanied by the Canadian icebreaker CCGS John A. Macdonald. The Manhattan was a specially reinforced supertanker that was sent to test the viability of the passage for the transport of oil. While the Manhattan succeeded, the route was deemed not cost effective and the Alaska Pipeline was built instead.

In June 1977, the Dutch sailor Willy de Roos left Belgium to attempt crossing the Northwest Passsage in his 45-foot steel yacht Williwaw. He reached the Bering Strait in September and after a stopover in Victoria, British Columbia went on to round Cape Horn and sail back to Belgium, thus being the first sailor to circumnavigate the Americas.

In October, 2005, a 47-foot aluminum sailboat, "Northabout," built and captained by Jarlath Cunnane, a retired construction manager, completed the first east-to-west circumnavigation of the pole by a single sailboat using the increasingly open Northwest Passage to get from Ireland to the Bering Strait. The voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was completed in a very fast time of 24 days — from sailing into Lancaster Sound off Baffin Bay on August 7th to reaching the Bering Strait, Alaska on September 1, 2001. The Northabout then cruised in Canada for two years. The return trip along the coast of Russia was slower, starting in 2004 but with an ice stop/winter over in Khatanga, Siberia — hence the return to Ireland via the Norwegian coast in October of 2005. On January 18, 2006, The Cruising Club of America awarded Jarlath Cunnane their Blue Water Medal, an award for "meritorious seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities."

International waters dispute

The Canadian government claims that the waters of the Northwest Passage are internal to Canada. In 1985 the U.S. icebreaker Polar Sea passed through and the U.S. Government made a point of not asking permission from the Canadians for the passage. They claimed that this was simply a cost effective way to get the ship from Greenland to Alaska and that there was no reason for them to be asking permission to travel through international waters. The Canadian government issued a declaration in 1986 reaffirming Canadian rights to the waters. However, the USA, European Union (as an organisation - not the member states whose foreign affairs were completely sovereign matters outside of the EU structure at the time), and Japan, among other countries, refused to recognize the Canadian claim. ^*

In late 2005, it was alleged that U.S. nuclear submarines had been traveling the passage without Canadian approval, sparking Canadian outrage. In his first news conference after the federal election then underway, then Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper rebuked an earlier statement made by the American ambassador that Arctic waters were international, stating the Canadian government's intention to enforce its sovereignty there.

The allegations arose after the U.S. Navy released photographs of the USS Charlotte surfaced at the North Pole. A submarine traveling between oceans by way of the Pole would have to then travel over a thousand kilometers out of its way to use the Northwest Passage (as opposed to simply heading directly to either ocean). Furthermore, shallow waters and underwater navigational uncertainties would force any submarine to operate very slowly and carefully within the Northwest Passage to avoid running aground; by contrast, submarines can move between oceans at top speed in the deep, open waters under the Pole.

On April 9, 2006, Canada's Joint Task Force North declared that the Canadian military will no longer refer to the region as the Northwest Passage, but as the Canadian Internal Waters. The declaration came after the successful completion of Operation Nunalivut (which translates from Inuit as "the land is ours"), which was expedition into the region by five military patrols.[http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1144619553697&call_pageid=968332188492

Effects of global warming

Around the time of the Viking Sagas and for at least two more centuries (a conservative interval from 1000 - 1200 AD that also happens to include the dates allotted to some of the larger Norse ships), prior to the Little Ice Age the climate was not only warmer, but the sea-level in the Arctic was also quite different from that of the present day. //www.spirasolaris.ca/sbb4g1bv.html Between the glacial rebound and global cooling, land levels of the land masses about the Northwest Passage have risen upwards to the order of 20m in the centuries after the Viking times.

In the summer of 2000, several ships took advantage of thinning summer ice cover on the Arctic Ocean to make the crossing. It is thought that global warming is likely to open the passage for increasing periods of time, making it attractive as a major shipping route. Routes from Europe to the Far East save 4000 km through the passage, as compared to the current routes through the Panama Canal.

Note

In 1981, Canadian folk singer Stan Rogers recorded the song "Northwest Passage", based on the history of attempts to establish the route. It appeared on his album of the same title.

External links

Irish Expedition completes the elusive Northwest Passage
Cunnane's Bluewater Medal achievement description - PDF
Arctic Passage at PBS' Nova site has articles, photographs and maps about the Northwest Passage, particularly the 1845 Franklin and 1903 Amundsen expeditions
Exploration of the Northwest Passage
The Sir John Franklin Mystery
'The Great Game in a cold climate'
Mission to Utjulik
The Voyage of the Manhattan
U.S. nuclear submarines travel the northwest passage without Canadian permission
Canada considers the Northwest Passage its internal waters, but the United States insists it is an international strait.
INFORMATION MEMORANDUM FOR MR. KISSINGER - THE WHITE HOUSE 1970

Arctic | Exploration | History of Canada | Disputed waters

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