See full version: The Northwest Passage
The shrinking of the Arctic sea ice and advances in modern vessels has made the route increasingly accessible. Alongside the expedition ships carrying adventurers are a handful of commercial vessels cutting 2,500 miles off their journey, saving precious time and fuel, and serving the remote communities dotted through the region.
Historic places of the Northwest Passage
It can be very cold here. The little community of Resolute on Cornwallis Island is one of the coldest inhabited places on earth - the average annual temperature is −15.7 °C (3.7 °F). The daily mean temperatures in late summer however are more bearable: August is 2.0 °C (35.6 °F) and September – 4.1 °C (24.6 °F).
Canada and the United States enjoy a peaceful coexistence – as allies and trading partners, they tend to cooperate on most important issues. However, one sticking point in their otherwise cordial relationship is a dispute over Canadian territorial claims of the Northwest Passage: coastal waters far above Canada’s northern coast in the Arctic circle. For years, this issue has been largely inconsequential. The region was, and still is, sparsely inhabited, and maritime traffic was essentially nonexistent. Recently, however, the melting of sea ice due to climate change has made the Northwest Passage a more viable route for commercial shipping. As temperatures rise and the ice continues to melt, shipping routes through the Arctic could cut transit times by 40% on major routes like those connecting China and Europe. here
Answer: The route became completely free of ice for the time in recorded history in the summer of 2007. report this ad
Question: Who was the first European to successfully navigate the Northwestern passage? here
The 900 miles sea route is difficult to traverse due to its icy landscape and dangerous weather conditions.
The first recorded attempt to discover the Northwest Passage was the East-west voyage of John Cabot and that was in 1497, ever since then European explorers have spent centuries trying to find the passage. more
Answer: Roald Amundsen was the first European to successfully navigate the Northwestern passage. here
Question: When did the route become completely free of ice for the first time?
Hudson and his crew survived a brutal and frigid winter. When the ice began to melt in the spring of 1611, Captain Hudson wanted to keep sailing west, but his crew was fed up. They organized a mutiny, dumped Hudson, his teenage son, and six loyal men on a small boat, and cast them off to fend for themselves. They disappeared into the wilderness and were never heard from again. [links]
Finding a direct route by sea to China became something of an obsession for the kingdoms of Western Europe in the mid-1400s after the Ottoman Turk Empire gained control of much of the Middle East. Finding a the Northwest Passage was a 400-year obsession for sea-faring nations.
The man who really moved the search for the Northwest Passage forward was Henry Hudson. His famous attempt occurred in the years 1610-11. After much sailing around in the northern coastal regions of eastern Canada, there was tremendous excitement when Hudson discovered the straight that now bears his name, the Hudson Straight, which is at the northern tip of Labrador. Hudson pressed forward in the frigid waters until his ship became trapped in the ice at James Bay. [links]
The next direct attempt to find the Northwest Passage was made by Italian explorer John Cabot, (whose real name was Giovanni Caboto). Despite him being Italian, the English bankrolled his mission to find the Northwest Passage, and he sailed under the British flag. In short, Cabot made three trips across the Atlantic, but the details of what he actually found are sketchy. Most historians think he died in 1499 on his third trip to America, although there are some reports claiming that he actually returned to England. What is known is that an associate of Cabot’s, a man by the name of William Weston, made a subsequent trip and actually sailed up the Hudson Strait in 1500. This was the first significant attempt to penetrate a waterway that might be the Northwest Passage. here
But for England, realizing any form of wealth from North America would not be so easy. Unlike South America, there was no gold-rich civilization to plunder, but rather, primitive Indians living close to nature. These were people who had little need for metals with monetary value. Before anyone could make money by establishing a colony in the New World, a system of long-term economic investment was needed. But in those days, there were no such models or institutions – no real business methods – for making investments now that would start paying off maybe 10 or 20 years after an initial investment. more
It was well understood that trade with China, then most often called Cathay, was a source of tremendous wealth. But after the Turks took command of the East, sea powers like England, Spain, Portugal, and the Netherlands had no easy access to the Far East. The only alternative was to sail south around the Horn of Africa and then head east through the Indian Ocean on the way to Cathay – an agonizingly long journey that drastically reduced the advantage of any trade in the Orient.