(HOST) Recently, the European Space Agency announced that the Northwest Passage is fully clear of ice for the first time since records began. For commentator Peter Gilbert, the news brings to mind centuries of compelling history of Arctic exploration.
(GILBERT) Before European Arctic explorers set their sites on reaching the North Pole, they sought another prize the discovery of the Northwest Passage a shipping route from the Atlantic across the top of North America, to the Pacific.
Where is the Northwest Passage? From Europe and the North Atlantic, sail up the west side of Greenland, turn left through the complex maze of islands that make up northern Canada, until you come out along the northern coast of Alaska; follow it west through the Arctic Ocean, then head south, through the Bering Strait into the Pacific.
The problem was not only finding the route through the Canadian archipelago, but also getting through the passage without having your wooden ship caught and crushed in the sea ice. This year, warmer temperatures have left the passage fully navigable.
Such a navigable route around North America would have dramatic implications environmental, political, and economic; it would be a third shorter than going through the Panama Canal, or, traveling east from Europe, going through the Suez Canal. And of course, in the nineteenth century, before those canals existed, such a shortcut would have been staggeringly important to trade and empire.
That’s why the Northwest Passage, and the North Pole, has been called the Arctic Grail. The quest for it obsessed English and other explorers for centuries, beginning in 1497 with John Cabot. His exploratory expedition was followed by expeditions led by many of the biggest names in Arctic exploration: Martin Frobisher, Jacques Cartier, Henry Hudson, James Cook, George Vancouver, Sir John Franklin, and John Rae, who in 1854 finally discovered a navigable route. It was not until 1905 that Norwegian Roald Amundsen became the first person to sail through the Passage, but his route was far too shallow for commercial traffic.
The nineteenth century was the heyday of the search for the Northwest Passage; it involved a number of relief and search expeditions that set out with Victorian heroism in the hope of finding Sir John Franklin. Later, it would be learned that his two-ship expedition had become icebound in 1846. While cold, starvation, and scurvy contributed to the death of the entire expedition, so too did lead poisoning from canned food sealed with lead-based solder; it caused bad judgment, disorientation, and death.
Although the Northwest Passage is not expected to become a viable alternative to the Panama Canal for some years, we can now envision Arctic open water rich in heritage and history, beckoning freighters and supertankers where deadly sea ice used to block forward progress of fragile wooden ships – and sometimes blocked their retreat as well. But such an ice-free trade route may come with deadly risks as well, not so much for the those making the passage, as for all those affected by global warming.
Peter Gilbert is executive director of the Vermont Humanities Council.