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84-547: The English silk-weaver William Baffin ( c.  1584  – 23 January 1622) became a navigator, explorer and cartographer. He is primarily known for his attempt to find a Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, during the course of which he was the first European to discover Baffin Bay situated between Canada and Greenland. He was also responsible for exceptional surveys of

168-610: A Northwest Passage from the North Atlantic to the Far East . The accuracy of Baffin's tidal and astronomical observations on this voyage was confirmed when William Edward Parry passed over the same ground in 1821. Baffin again sailed as pilot of Discovery the next year. Leaving Gravesend on 26 March, he passed west of Greenland up the Davis Strait , discovering the large bay to its north which now bears his name , together with

252-478: A "learned-unlearned Mariner and Mathematician... wanting art of words" who "really employed himself to those industries, whereof here you see so evident fruits." His earliest mention occurs in 1612, when he was chief pilot on Captain James Hall 's 4th expedition to Greenland. Hall's three earlier explorations had been underwritten by Christian IV , the king of Denmark-Norway anxious to reestablish contact with

336-669: A "troublesome, impatient woman" – forced the East India Company into court over her husband's wages and other claims. Three years later, a settlement of £ 500 was agreed upon. Baffin Bay and Baffin Island were named in William Baffin's honour, and he is responsible for the names of several of their features. His journals were the only account of several of his voyages. Excerpts were printed by Samuel Purchas in 1625, but Baffin's charts and hydrographic observations were omitted owing to

420-681: A dog sledge. Adolphus Greely 's Lady Franklin Bay Expedition bested Markham by a few miles, reaching 83° 24′N in 1882. In 1895, Norwegians Fridtjof Nansen and Fredrik Hjalmar Johansen reached latitude 86° 14′N . In 1900, Umberto Cagni of the Italian Royal Navy left the base camp established by Luigi Amedeo, Duke of the Abruzzi , and reached latitude 86° 34′N on April 25, beating Nansen's 1895 mark by 35 to 40 kilometres (22 to 25 mi). Two American explorers claimed to reach

504-698: A fleet of 11 ships and 2 pinnaces . Icy conditions precluded exploration to the north, but Baffin examined a "considerable portion" of Spitzbergen's coast, returning to London on 4 October. In 1615, he entered the service of the "Company of Merchants of London, Discoverers of the North-West Passage", which had been established in 1612. Its first governor was Thomas Smythe , one of the underwriters of Hall's fourth voyage. Baffin served as pilot of Discovery , which left England under Captain Robert Bylot on 15 March. It carefully explored Hudson Strait in search of

588-590: A lead-based solder ). Another researcher has suggested botulism caused deaths among crew members. Evidence from 1996, that confirms reports first made by John Rae in 1854 based on Inuit accounts, suggests that the last of the crew may have resorted to cannibalism of deceased members in an effort to survive. Furthest North The most northerly point of mainland Europe, Knivskjellodden in Norway, lies at 71° 11' N . War and trade had led to voyages between western Norway and Northern Russia around Knivskjellodden and

672-685: A map showing a narrow and crooked Strait of Anian separating Asia from the Americas . The strait grew in European imagination as an easy sea lane linking Europe with the residence of Khagan (the Great Khan) in Cathay (northern China ). Cartographers and seamen tried to demonstrate its reality. Sir Francis Drake sought the western entrance in 1579. The Greek pilot Juan de Fuca , sailing from Acapulco (in Mexico) under

756-487: A month fighting his way through Hudson Strait. In September 1619, he found the entrance to Hudson Bay and spent the winter near the mouth of the Churchill River. Cold, famine , and scurvy destroyed so many of his men that only he and two other men survived. With these men, he sailed for home with Lamprey on July 16, 1620, reaching Bergen , Norway, on September 20, 1620. René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built

840-615: A northern Atlantic passage to the Spice Islands . An English expedition was launched in 1576 by Martin Frobisher , who took three trips west to what is now the Canadian Arctic in order to find the passage. Frobisher Bay , which he first charted, is named after him. As part of another expedition, in July 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert , who had written a treatise on the discovery of the passage and

924-512: A possible trade route to Asia, but were blocked by North, Central, and South America, by ice, or by rough waters (e.g. Tierra del Fuego ). An ice-bound northern route was discovered in 1850 by the Irish explorer Robert McClure whose expedition completed the passage by hauling sledges. Scotsman John Rae explored a more southerly area in 1854 through which Norwegian Roald Amundsen made the first complete passage entirely by ship in 1903–1906. Until 2009,

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1008-609: A record which stood for 236 years, before being blocked by ice. On May 9, 1619, under the auspices of King Christian IV of Denmark–Norway , Jens Munk set out with 65 men and the king's two ships, Einhörningen (Unicorn), a small frigate , and Lamprenen (Lamprey), a sloop, which were outfitted under his own supervision. His mission was to discover the Northwest Passage to the Indies and China. Munk penetrated Davis Strait as far north as 69°, found Frobisher Bay, and then spent almost

1092-471: A route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America, also known as the New World. When it became apparent that there was no route through the heart of the continent, attention turned to the possibility of a passage through northern waters. There was a lack of scientific knowledge about conditions; for instance, some people believed that seawater was incapable of freezing. (As late as

1176-674: A series of sounds which radiate from its head and were named by him after members of the North-West Passage Company: Lancaster , Smith , and Jones . On this voyage, he sailed over 300 statute miles (480 km) farther north than his predecessor John Davis : since his voyages seemed to preclude hope of an ice-free nautical path to the Orient, the area was not explored again for two centuries and his furthest north (about 77° 45′ N) remained unsurpassed in North America until

1260-411: A ship's hull . Cargo routes may thus be slow and uncertain, depending on prevailing conditions and the ability to predict them. Because much containerized traffic operates in a just-in-time mode (which does not tolerate delays well) and because of the relative isolation of the passage (which impedes shipping companies from optimizing their operations by grouping multiple stopovers on the same itinerary),

1344-473: A warship. On 9 May 1926, Richard Evelyn Byrd attempted to fly over the North Pole in an airplane. He was widely credited with achieving this, but his claim subsequently became subject to doubt. Finally, on 12 May 1926 , the airship Norge carried Roald Amundsen and fifteen other men including the craft's designer and pilot Umberto Nobile , helmsman Oscar Wisting , navigator Hjalmar Riiser-Larsen , and

1428-551: A way through the continent. Cartier became persuaded that the St. Lawrence was the Passage; when he found the way blocked by rapids at what is now Montreal , he was so certain that these rapids were all that was keeping him from China (in French, la Chine ), that he named the rapids for China. Samuel de Champlain renamed them Sault Saint-Louis in 1611, but the name was changed to Lachine Rapids in

1512-592: Is accordingly called the Northeast Passage (NEP). The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and from Mainland Canada by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages , Northwestern Passages or the Canadian Internal Waters . For centuries, European explorers, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492, sought a navigable passage as

1596-623: Is the first of its kind on record. He is also the namesake of the William Baffin rose. Northwest Passage The Northwest Passage ( NWP ) is the sea lane between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through the Arctic Ocean , along the northern coast of North America via waterways through the Arctic Archipelago of Canada. The eastern route along the Arctic coasts of Norway and Siberia

1680-596: The Arctic pack ice prevented regular marine shipping throughout most of the year. Arctic sea ice decline , linked primarily to climate change , has rendered the waterways more navigable for ice navigation . The contested sovereignty claims over the waters may complicate future shipping through the region: the Canadian government maintains that the Northwestern Passages are part of Canadian Internal Waters , but

1764-530: The Bering Strait (separating Russia and Alaska), into the Pacific Ocean. In the 21st century, major changes to the ice pack due to climate change have stirred speculation that the passage may become clear enough of ice to permit safe commercial shipping for at least part of the year. On August 21, 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker . According to Nalan Koc of

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1848-546: The Inuit and people of the Dorset culture who inhabited the region. Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe dispatched explorers to discover a commercial sea route north and west around North America. The Northwest Passage represented a new route to the established trading nations of Asia . England called the hypothetical northern route the "Northwest Passage". The desire to establish such

1932-524: The McClure Arctic Expedition discovered the Northwest Passage in 1850. In 1906, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to complete the passage solely by ship, from Greenland to Alaska in the sloop Gjøa . Since that date, several fortified ships have made the journey. From east to west, the direction of most early exploration attempts, expeditions entered the passage from

2016-589: The Milne Inlet , on Baffin Island 's north shore, were bound for ports in Asia. Those freighters did not sail west through the remainder of the Northwest Passage; they sailed east, rounded the tip of Greenland, and transited Russia's Northern Sea Route. The International Hydrographic Organization defines the limits of the Northwestern Passages as follows: On the West. The Eastern limit of Beaufort Sea from Lands End through

2100-639: The Muscovy Company's Map of 1625. The Seven Islands , at 80° 49′N , north of Nordaustlandet , were first marked on a Dutch map of 1663, but were allegedly reached by a ship of Enkhuizen as early as 1618. In 1707, the Dutch whaler Cornelis Giles rounded the northernmost point of Nordaustlandet in Svalbard, passing 81°N. In 1806, the Resolution of Whitby, under William Scoresby, Sr, was said to have sailed north of

2184-604: The NASA satellite images suggested that the Arctic had entered a "death spiral" caused by climate change, Professor Mark Serreze , a sea ice specialist at the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said: "The passages are open. It's a historic event. We are going to see this more and more as the years go by." However, some thick sections of ice will remain hard to melt in the shorter term. Drifting and persistence of large chunks of ice, especially in springtime, can be problematic as they can clog entire straits or severely damage

2268-634: The Norse settlements there . It was still unknown that they had been overrun by the Inuit centuries before, but after the third failed expedition, Christian abandoned the project. Hall then successfully interested four English merchants— Thomas Smythe , James Lancaster , William Cockayne , and Richard Ball—in permitting him to continue his work. Baffin and Hall sailed from the Humber aboard Patience on 22 April, accompanied by Heart's Ease . During this voyage, Captain Hall

2352-674: The North Cape since at least the 15th Century. John Davis on his third voyage to seek the Northwest Passage in 1587 sailed up the Strait that bears his name , between Greenland and Baffin Island , to a latitude of 72° 12' N . A Dutch expedition led by Willem Barentz , attempting the Northeast Passage reached 79° 49’N on 16 June 1596 , on the NW coast of Spitsbergen . In 1607, Henry Hudson probably reached Hakluyt's Headland (a little south of

2436-577: The Norwegian Polar Institute , this was the first time the Passage has been clear since they began keeping records in 1972. The Northwest Passage opened again on August 25, 2008. It is usually reported that ocean thawing will open up the Northwest Passage (and the Northern Sea Route ) for various kind of ships, making it possible to sail around the Arctic ice cap and possibly cutting thousands of miles off shipping routes. Warning that

2520-521: The Persian assaults on the Portuguese fortresses on Qeshm and Hormuz islands in exchange for certain trade concessions. At Qeshm off Bandar Abbas , he was sent ashore on 23 January 1622 to take measurements of the height and distance of the walls of Fort Queixome to assist the fleet's gunners. One of his contemporaries described his death: Master Baffin went on shoare with his Geometricall Instruments, for

2604-682: The Red Sea and Persian Gulf on behalf of the East India Company . Nothing is known about Baffin's early life (an estimated year of birth, 1584, originated in the Encyclopædia Britannica in the 19th century, but without known documentary support). It has been conjectured that he was born to a humble station in London and gradually raised himself through his diligence and perseverance. In printing his journals, Samuel Purchas wrote of him as

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2688-637: The Strait of Georgia . To fully explore this new inland sea, an expedition under Dionisio Alcalá Galiano was sent in 1792. He was explicitly ordered to explore all channels that might turn out to be a Northwest Passage. In 1776, Captain James Cook was dispatched by the Admiralty in Great Britain on an expedition to explore the Passage. A 1745 act, when extended in 1775, promised a £20,000 prize for whoever discovered

2772-487: The University of Alberta , examined remains from sites associated with the expedition. This led to further investigations and the examination of tissue and bone from the frozen bodies of three seamen, John Torrington , William Braine and John Hartnell , exhumed from the permafrost of Beechey Island . Laboratory tests revealed high concentrations of lead in all three (the expedition carried 8,000 tins of food sealed with

2856-579: The Vancouver Expedition (led by George Vancouver who had previously accompanied Cook) surveyed in detail all the passages from the Northwest Coast . He confirmed that there was no such passage south of the Bering Strait. This conclusion was supported by the evidence of Alexander MacKenzie , who explored the Arctic and Pacific Oceans in 1793. In the first half of the 19th century, some parts of

2940-419: The sailing ship , Le Griffon , in his quest to find the Northwest Passage via the upper Great Lakes . He made his way across Lake Erie and Lake Huron , making port on Mackinac Island before landing at Washington Island at the mouth of Green Bay to trade for furs with Pottawatomie Indians. La Salle stayed behind while the ship sailed back to Mackinac with the furs. Le Griffon disappeared in 1679 on

3024-686: The Alaskan region. His ship was wrecked off the Kamchatka Peninsula , as many of his crew were disabled by scurvy. The Spanish made several voyages to the northwest coast of North America during the late 18th century. Determining whether a Northwest Passage existed was one of the motives for their efforts. Among the voyages that involved careful searches for a Passage included the 1775 and 1779 voyages of Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra . The journal of Francisco Antonio Mourelle , who served as Quadra's second in command in 1775, fell into English hands. It

3108-512: The Arctic Ocean, thereby proving that there was no strait connecting Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean. Most Northwest Passage expeditions originated in Europe or on the east coast of North America, seeking to traverse the Passage in the westbound direction. Some progress was made in exploring the western reaches of the imagined passage. In 1728 Vitus Bering , a Danish-born Russian navy officer, used

3192-530: The Arctic and Hudson Bay. In 1611, while in James Bay , Hudson's crew mutinied. They set Hudson and his teenage son John, along with seven sick, infirm, or loyal crewmen, adrift in a small open boat. He was never seen again. A mission was sent out in 1612, again in Discovery , commanded by Sir Thomas Button to find Henry Hudson and continue through the Northwest Passage. After failing to find Hudson, and exploring

3276-809: The Atlantic Ocean via the Davis Strait and through Baffin Bay , both of which are in Canada. Five to seven routes have been taken through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, via the McClure Strait , Dease Strait , and the Prince of Wales Strait , but not all of them are suitable for larger ships. From there ships passed through westward through the Beaufort Sea and the Chukchi Sea , and then southwards through

3360-583: The British East India Company and the Muscovy Company, set out in 1606 to follow up on Weymouth's discoveries and find the Northwest Passage. After his ship ran aground and was nearly crushed by ice, Knight disappeared while searching for a better anchorage. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up what is now called the Hudson River in search of the Passage; encouraged by the saltiness of the water in

3444-415: The Canadian Arctic to chart the last unknown swaths of the Northwest Passage. Confidence was high, as they estimated there was less than 500 km (310 mi) remaining of unexplored Arctic mainland coast. When the ships failed to return, relief expeditions and search parties explored the Canadian Arctic, which resulted in a thorough charting of the region, along with a possible passage. Many artifacts from

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3528-523: The East Coast to Cape Sherard (Cape Osborn) ( 74°35′N 80°30′W  /  74.583°N 80.500°W  / 74.583; -80.500 ) and across to Cape Liverpool, Bylot Island ( 73°44′N 77°50′W  /  73.733°N 77.833°W  / 73.733; -77.833 ); down the East coast of this island to Cape Graham Moore, its southeastern point, and thence across to Cape Macculloch ( 72°29′N 75°08′W  /  72.483°N 75.133°W  / 72.483; -75.133 ) and down

3612-520: The East coast of Baffin Island to East Bluff, its Southeastern extremity, and thence the Eastern limit of Hudson Strait . On the South. The mainland coast of Hudson Strait; the Northern limits of Hudson Bay ; the mainland coast from Beach Point to Cape Bathurst . As a result of their westward explorations and their settlement of Greenland, the Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island , Skraeling Island for hunting expeditions and trading with Inuit groups. The subsequent arrival of

3696-401: The Little Ice Age is thought to have been one of the reasons that European seafaring into the Northwest Passage ceased until the late 15th century. In 1539, Hernán Cortés commissioned Francisco de Ulloa to sail along the Baja California Peninsula on the western coast of North America. Ulloa concluded that the Gulf of California was the southernmost section of a strait supposedly linking

3780-418: The North Pole; Frederick Cook in 1908 and Robert Peary in 1909. Cook's claim was soon judged to be fraudulent, and Peary was credited as the discoverer of the North Pole for much of the 20th century. In recent decades, however, Peary's claim has become the subject of controversy , though he did set a new record for Farthest North – his support party was dismissed at 87° 45′N . With Peary's claim accepted at

3864-557: The Northeast. The Coast of Ellesmere Island between C. Columbia and C. Sheridan the Northern limit of Baffin Bay . On the East. The East Coast of Ellesmere Island between C. Sheridan and Cape Norton Shaw ( 76°29′N 78°30′W  /  76.483°N 78.500°W  / 76.483; -78.500 ), thence across to Phillips Point ( Coburg Island ) through this Island to Marina Peninsula ( 75°55′N 79°10′W  /  75.917°N 79.167°W  / 75.917; -79.167 ) and across to Cape Fitz Roy ( Devon Island ) down

3948-443: The Northwest Passage (north of the Bering Strait) were explored separately by many expeditions, including those by John Ross , Elisha Kent Kane , William Edward Parry , and James Clark Ross ; overland expeditions were also led by John Franklin , George Back , Peter Warren Dease , Thomas Simpson , and John Rae . In 1826 Frederick William Beechey explored the north coast of Alaska, discovering Point Barrow. Sir Robert McClure

4032-481: The Northwest Passage and other Arctic routes are not always seen as promising shipping lanes by industry insiders, at least for the time being. The uncertainty related to physical damage to ships is also thought to translate into higher insurance premiums, especially because of the technical challenges posed by Arctic navigation (as of 2014, only 12 percent of Canada's Arctic waters have been charted to modern standards). The Beluga group of Bremen , Germany, sent

4116-422: The Pacific with the Gulf of Saint Lawrence . His voyage perpetuated the notion of the Island of California and saw the beginning of a search for the Strait of Anián. The strait probably took its name from Ania, a Chinese province mentioned in a 1559 edition of Marco Polo 's book; it first appears on a map issued by Italian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi about 1562. Five years later Bolognino Zaltieri issued

4200-405: The Royal Navy officer Edward Augustus Inglefield reached 78° 28′ N in the same area in 1852. With the abandonment of projects for the Northwest Passage, Baffin took service with the East India Company , possibly with the intent of eventually discovering the passage from the western end. He left as master's mate to Andrew Shilling , captain of Anne Royal , on 4 February 1617. The fleet – under

4284-425: The Seven Islands and reached 81° 50′N . One of the first expeditions with the explicit purpose of reaching the North Pole was that of Sir William Edward Parry in 1827, who reached 82° 45′N , a record that stood for decades. Sir Albert Hastings Markham , a member of the British Arctic Expedition of 1875 was the next one to get closer to the pole 48 years later, when he reached a latitude of 83° 20′26″N by

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4368-497: The Southwest coast of Prince Patrick Island to Griffiths Point, thence a line to Cape Prince Alfred, the Northwestern extreme of Banks Island , through its West coast to Cape Kellet, the Southwestern point, and thence a line to Cape Bathurst on the mainland ( 70°36′N 127°32′W  /  70.600°N 127.533°W  / 70.600; -127.533 ). On the Northwest. The Arctic Ocean between Lands End, Prince Patrick Island, and Cape Columbia , Ellesmere Island . On

4452-424: The USS O-12 . The Nautilus was modified for under ice operations by submarine designer Simon Lake so it could detect openings (or, if necessary, drill them) in the ice pack and surface to recharge her batteries. While the expedition was a failure, the Nautilus did reach a latitude of 82 degrees north. In accordance with the lease agreement, the Nautilus was scuttled after the expedition to prevent her reuse as

4536-429: The United States claims that they are an international strait and transit passage, allowing free and unencumbered passage. If, as the head of a Canadian mining company claims, parts of the eastern end of the Passage are barely 15 metres (49 ft) deep, the route's viability as a Euro-Asian shipping route is reduced. In 2016, Chinese shipping line COSCO expressed a desire to make regular voyages of cargo ships using

4620-477: The coast, south of Parry Channel and west of Baffin Island. This area was mostly mapped in 1848–1854 by ships looking for Franklin's lost expedition. The first crossing was made by Roald Amundsen in 1903–1906. He used a small ship and hugged the coast. Before the Little Ice Age (late Middle Ages to the 19th century), Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island , Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with

4704-479: The command of Captain Martin Pring – reached Saldanha Bay in South Africa on 21 June and Surat in British India in September. Baffin's ship then performed separate service on runs to Mocha in Yemen and other ports of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf . Upon his return to London in September, 1619, the company granted him special recognition for the valuable charts he had made during the course of his voyage. In 1620, he sailed east again as master of London on

4788-440: The crew may have survived into the early 1850s, no evidence has ever been found of any survivors. In 1853, explorer John Rae was told by local Inuit about the disastrous fate of Franklin's expedition, but his reports were not welcomed in Britain on account of his reports of cannibalism amongst the surviving crews. Starvation , exposure and scurvy all contributed to the men's deaths. In 1981 Owen Beattie , an anthropologist from

4872-405: The difficult extinction of a fire on board the ship, he sailed to Greenland , where he traded goods with the Inuit peoples on July 8, 1746. He crossed to the town of Fort Nelson and spent the summer on the Hayes River . He renewed his efforts in June 1747, without success, before returning to England. In 1772, the English fur trader Samuel Hearne travelled overland northwest from Hudson Bay to

4956-403: The estuary, he reached present-day Albany, New York , before giving up. On September 14, 1609, Hudson entered the Tappan Zee while sailing upstream from New York Harbor . At first, Hudson believed the widening of the river indicated that he had found the Northwest Passage. He proceeded upstream as far as present-day Troy before concluding that no such strait existed there. He later explored

5040-437: The expedition were found over the next century and a half, including notes that the ships were ice-locked in 1846 near King William Island , about halfway through the passage, and unable to break free. Records showed Franklin died in 1847 and Captain Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier took over command. In 1848 the expedition abandoned the two ships and its members tried to escape south across the tundra by sledge . Although some of

5124-417: The expedition's sponsor, Lincoln Ellsworth , over the North Pole, en route from Spitsbergen to Alaska , the first achievement of the Pole about which there is no controversy. The first person definitely to set foot on the Pole was the Russian Alexander Kuznetsov , who landed an aircraft there in 1948. On 3 August 1958 , a US Navy submarine, also named USS  Nautilus , was the first to sail under

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5208-513: The expedition, including William Bligh , George Vancouver , and John Gore , thought the existence of a route was 'improbable'. Before reaching 65°N they found the coastline pushing them further south, but Gore convinced Cook to sail on into the Cook Inlet in the hope of finding the route. They continued to the limits of the Alaskan peninsula and the start of the 1,200 mi (1,900 km) chain of Aleutian Islands. Despite reaching 70°N , they encountered nothing but icebergs. From 1792 to 1794,

5292-465: The expense involved. All but one were subsequently lost, and in time Baffin's discoveries came to be doubted. He was, however, a hero to the explorer John Ross , who led an expedition in 1818 that confirmed Baffin's account in almost all particulars. Besides his geographical discoveries, Baffin is celebrated for the scrupulous accuracy of his many scientific and magnetic observations. His reckoning of longitude at sea by lunar distances on 26 April 1615

5376-413: The far north is blocked by ice. The eastern entrance and main axis of the northwest passage, the Parry Channel, was found in 1819. The approach from the west through Bering Strait is impractical because of the need to sail around ice near Point Barrow . East of Point Barrow the coast is fairly clear in summer. This area was mapped in pieces from overland in 1821–1839. This leaves the large rectangle north of

5460-407: The first Western commercial vessels through the Northern Sea Route (Northeast Passage) in 2009. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced that "ships entering the North-West passage should first report to his government". The first commercial cargo ship to have sailed through the Northwest Passage was SS  Manhattan in August 1969. SS Manhattan , of 115,000 deadweight tonnage ,

5544-462: The flag of the Spanish crown, claimed he had sailed the strait from the Pacific to the North Sea and back in 1592. The Spaniard Bartholomew de Fonte claimed to have sailed from Hudson Bay to the Pacific via the strait in 1640. The first recorded attempt to discover the Northwest Passage was the east–west voyage of John Cabot in 1497, sent by Henry VII in search of a direct route to the Orient . In 1524, Charles V sent Estêvão Gomes to find

5628-434: The ice pack to reach the North Pole. On 17 March 1959 , the USS  Skate became the first submarine to surface at the North Pole. Ralph Plaisted and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse by snowmobile across the ice to the North Pole on 20 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of

5712-578: The latitude reached by Barentz), but could not proceed further as ice lay packed along Spitsbergen 's north coast. In 1612, an explorer from Hull , Thomas Marmaduke , claimed to have reached 82°N, while Dutch explorers in 1614 and 1624 claimed to have sailed even further north to 83°N. These latter claims lack basis in fact, with the second, made by Joris Carolus , impossible knowing ice conditions that season; although Marmaduke did at least reach Gråhuken, at 79° 48′N . English whalers reached Svalbard 's Nordkapp at 80° 32′N , in or before 1622, as shown on

5796-449: The mid-18th century, Captain James Cook had reported that Antarctic icebergs had yielded fresh water, seemingly confirming the hypothesis.) Explorers thought that an Open Polar Sea close to the North Pole must exist. The belief that a route lay to the far north persisted for several centuries and led to numerous expeditions into the Arctic. Many ended in disaster, including that by Sir John Franklin in 1845. While searching for him

5880-448: The mid-19th century. In 1602, George Weymouth became the first European to explore what would later be called Hudson Strait when he sailed Discovery 300 nautical miles (560 km) into the Strait. Weymouth's expedition to find the Northwest Passage was funded jointly by the British East India Company and the Muscovy Company . Discovery was the same ship used by Henry Hudson on his final voyage. John Knight , employed by

5964-402: The passage to the Eastern United States and Europe, after a successful passage by Nordic Orion of 73,500 tonnes deadweight tonnage in September 2013. Fully laden, Nordic Orion sat too deep in the water to sail through the Panama Canal . The Northwest Passage has three sections: Many attempts were made to find a salt water exit west from Hudson Bay, but the Fury and Hecla Strait in

6048-504: The passage. Initially the Admiralty had wanted Charles Clerke to lead the expedition, with Cook (in retirement following his exploits in the Pacific) acting as a consultant. However, Cook had researched Bering's expeditions, and the Admiralty ultimately placed their faith in the veteran explorer to lead, with Clerke accompanying him. After journeying through the Pacific, to make an attempt from

6132-655: The return trip of her maiden voyage. In the spring of 1682, La Salle made his famous voyage down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico . La Salle led an expedition from France in 1684 to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico. He was murdered by his followers in 1687. Henry Ellis , born in Ireland, was part of a company aiming to discover the Northwest Passage in May 1746. After

6216-512: The special recommendation of Capt. Shilling, the commander of the expedition. Baffin left the Downs on 25 March and reached Suvali Beach near Surat in India on 9 November. Hearing of a joint Portuguese and Dutch fleet searching for them, Shilling went in search of them: he was wounded in battle in the Gulf of Oman on 28 December and died on 6 January. A year later, the East India Company agreed to join

6300-476: The strait first discovered by Semyon Dezhnyov in 1648 but later accredited to and named after Bering (the Bering Strait ). He concluded that North America and Russia were separate land masses by sailing between them. In 1741 with Lieutenant Aleksei Chirikov , he explored seeking further lands beyond Siberia . While they were separated, Chirikov discovered several of the Aleutian Islands while Bering charted

6384-511: The taking of the height and distance of the Castle wall, for the better levelling of his peece to make his shot; but, as he was about the same, he received a small shot from the Castle into his belly, wherewith he gave three leapes, and died immediately. He was one of few English casualties. The garrison swiftly surrendered, and Anglo-Persian control of Qeshm permitted the swift conquest of Ormuz , opening Persia to direct trade. His wife – reckoned

6468-475: The time, overland expeditions to the North Pole came to an end. Roald Amundsen of Norway redirected his planned Arctic expedition and instead aimed for the South Pole, which he achieved in 1911 . In 1931, an expedition led by Sir Hubert Wilkins and Lincoln Ellsworth and partly financed by William Randolph Hearst attempted to reach the North Pole with a leased US Navy submarine named Nautilus , formerly

6552-423: The west coast of Hudson Bay, Button returned home due to illness in the crew. In 1614, William Gibbons attempted to find the Passage, but was turned back by ice. The next year, 1615, Robert Bylot , a survivor of Hudson's crew, returned to Hudson Strait in Discovery , but was turned back by ice. Bylot tried again in 1616 with William Baffin . They sailed as far as Lancaster Sound and reached 77°45′ North latitude,

6636-510: The west, Cook began at Nootka Sound in April 1778. He headed north along the coastline, charting the lands and searching for the regions sailed by the Russians 40 years previously. The Admiralty's orders had commanded the expedition to ignore all inlets and rivers until they reached a latitude of 65°N . Cook, however, failed to make any progress in sighting a Northwestern Passage. Various officers on

6720-565: Was a backer of Frobisher, claimed the territory of Newfoundland for the English crown. On August 8, 1585, the English explorer John Davis entered Cumberland Sound , Baffin Island. The major rivers on the east coast were also explored in case they could lead to a transcontinental passage. Jacques Cartier 's explorations of the Saint Lawrence River in 1535 were initiated in hope of finding

6804-435: Was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage in 1851 when he looked across McClure Strait from Banks Island and viewed Melville Island . However, this strait was not navigable to ships at that time. The only usable route linking the entrances of Lancaster Sound and Dolphin and Union Strait was discovered by John Rae in 1854. In 1845, a lavishly equipped two-ship expedition led by Sir John Franklin sailed to

6888-598: Was killed by the Inuit on the west coast of Greenland but Baffin successfully returned to Hull on 9/11 under the new captain Andrew Barker. Over the next two years, Baffin served in the Muscovy Company -controlled whale-fishery off Spitzbergen . During the 1613 season, he served under Captain Benjamin Joseph as pilot of Tiger , the flagship of the 7-vessel whaling fleet; in 1614, he and Joseph served on Thomasine , amid

6972-401: Was the largest commercial vessel ever to navigate the Northwest Passage. The largest passenger ship to navigate the Northwest Passage was the cruise liner Crystal Serenity of gross tonnage 69,000. Starting on August 10, 2016, the ship sailed from Vancouver to New York City with 1,500 passengers and crew, taking 28 days. In 2018, two of the freighters leaving Baffinland 's port in

7056-510: Was translated and published in London , stimulating exploration. Captain James Cook made use of the journal during his explorations of the region. In 1791 Alessandro Malaspina sailed to Yakutat Bay , Alaska, which was rumoured to be a Passage. In 1790 and 1791 Francisco de Eliza led several exploring voyages into the Strait of Juan de Fuca , searching for a possible Northwest Passage and finding

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