Northwest Passage is a water route, long sought by explorers, across or around North America. The explorers who followed Christopher Columbus soon found that North America was not a part of Asia, as they had believed at first. At that time, English, French, and Dutch adventurers were more interested in finding an easy route to Asia than they were in exploring and settling North America. So they began to look for a “Northwest Passage,” or waterway, that would take them around or through the North American continent.
The search for the Northwest Passage is a tale of adventure and heroism. In 1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, sailing under the French flag, tried to find the passage. He probably explored as far north as Maine.
Jacques Cartier, while exploring for France in 1535, found the St. Lawrence River. He was seeking a route to China. Henry Hudson was sent out many years later by the Dutch East India Company to find a shorter route to the South Seas. He thought he had found that route in 1609 when he sailed into New York Bay and some distance up the Hudson River. In 1610, Hudson explored the Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay while searching for the Northwest Passage.
No country tried harder than England to find the passage. Sir Martin Frobisher began a series of English expeditions in 1576. Other English navigators continued these explorations for 300 years. Frobisher made many important findings, including Frobisher Bay, an indentation in Baffin Island. John Davis followed Frobisher and sailed into the strait that now bears Davis’ name. In 1616, William Baffin and Robert Bylot sailed up Davis Strait and around the great channel that has ever since been known as Baffin Bay. Russia, the Netherlands, and Denmark took an interest in the search.
By the close of the 1700’s, the territory that had been explored included Hudson Strait, Hudson Bay, Davis Strait, Baffin Bay, and the icy seas from Greenland to Svalbard and from Svalbard to Novaya Zemlya. See Exploration.
Commander John Ross, a Scottish explorer, began the final series of expeditions in 1818. The most noted of the explorers to follow him was Sir John Franklin, a British explorer. Franklin found a passage to Asia during a voyage from 1845 to 1847. His ships reached King William Island, near waters that led directly to the Asian shore. But Franklin and his crew died after their ships became jammed in the ice, and their discovery was not known until later expeditions found relics of their trip. In 1850, Sir Robert McClure, a British explorer, sailed from the west to the northern shore of what is now Banks Island. Thick ice then halted his voyage. McClure and his crew continued by sled to Melville Island, where they transferred to another ship, which had come from the east. On that ship, they completed the first journey across the Northwest Passage in 1854.
In 1906, Roald Amundsen’s ship, the Gjøa, carried the first expedition to sail all the way through the Northwest Passage. Amundsen traveled from east to west. The first west-to-east voyage all the way through the passage was completed in 1942 by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police schooner St. Roch.
McClure Strait was conquered in 1954 by United States Navy and Coast Guard icebreakers. Three U.S. Coast Guard cutters, the Spar, the Bramble, and the Storis, aided by the Canadian Navy icebreaker the Labrador, made the west-to-east trip in 1957. They traveled through Bellot Strait. This channel permits cargo ships to unload supplies for the North Warning System radar line in northern Canada. The Spar was the first ship to sail completely around North America on a continuous voyage. It started in Bristol, Rhode Island, went south to the Panama Canal, then up the Pacific Coast, through the Northwest Passage, and back to Bristol.
In 1960, the U.S. atomic submarine Seadragon made the first underwater crossing of the Northwest Passage. It traveled 850 miles (1,368 kilometers) from Lancaster Sound, through the Canadian Arctic islands, and into McClure Strait. In 1969, the U.S. icebreaker-tanker Manhattan became the first commercial ship to complete the passage. The Manhattan sailed to Alaska by way of the Prince of Wales Strait.
