Northwest

The Northwest Passage is a sea route through the Arctic Ocean, along the northern coast of North America via the waterways amidst the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. more...

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The various islands of the archipelago are separated from one another and the Canadian mainland by a series of Arctic waterways collectively known as the Northwest Passages or Northwestern Passages.

Sought by explorers for centuries as a possible trade route, it was first navigated by Roald Amundsen in 1903-6. The Arctic pack ice prevents regular marine shipping throughout the year, but due to climate change, the pack ice is being reduced and may eventually make the waterways more navigable. This and the contested sovereignty claims over the waters may complicate future shipping through the region. The Canadian government considers the Northwestern Passages part of Canadian Internal Waters, but various countries maintain they are an international strait or transit passage, allowing free and unencumbered passage.

Overview

Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Eurasia dispatched explorers in an attempt 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. In 1493 to defuse trade disputes Pope Alexander VI split the discovered world in two between Spain and Portugal; thus France, Holland and England were left without a sea route to Asia, either via Africa or South America.The British called the hypothetical route the Northwest Passage. The desire to establish such a route motivated much of the European exploration of both coasts of North America. 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. This was driven in some part by scientific naiveté, namely an early belief that seawater was incapable of freezing (as late as the mid 18th century, Captain James Cook had reported, for example, that Antarctic icebergs had yielded fresh water, seemingly confirming the hypothesis), and that a route close to the North Pole must therefore exist. The belief that a route lay to the far north persisted for several centuries and led to a number of expeditions into the Arctic, including the attempt by Sir John Franklin in 1845. In 1906, Roald Amundsen first successfully completed a path from Greenland to Alaska in the Gjøa. Since that date, a number of ice-fortified ships have made the journey.

Read more at Wikipedia.org