Reaching the Indies from Europe by sea… Bartolomeu Dias, in 1488, and Magellan, in 1520, certainly opened two routes to the fabulous riches of the Orient, but these were interminable journeys, going around Africa for the first, America for the second. Worried about Spanish and Portuguese maritime domination, the English would struggle to reach the West by passing through the North… for four centuries.
The Canadian Arctic, a labyrinth of islands and inlets
The first attempt was made by the Venetian Giovanni Cabot, commissioned by King Henry VII, who reached Newfoundland in 1497. Martin Frobisher (1576-1578), Humphrey Gilbert (1583), John Davis (1585-1587), Henry Hudson (1610), James Cook (1776), John Ross, his nephew James and William Parry (1818-1833), John Franklin (1845) followed… Nothing worked: the Canadian Arctic is a labyrinth of islands and inlets. The Northwest Passage still resists…
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Amundsen’s Journey
In June 1903, the Norwegian Roald Amundsen reached West Greenland aboard a small trawler, the YewHe slipped between the islands, then dropped anchor in a bay on King William Island, where the ship was frozen in ice on October 3. He remained there until August 1905, exploring the island and learning to drive sled dogs.
A few days after setting sail again, he came across a whaling ship from San Francisco! He now knew that the way was clear… but he still had to cross the Bering Strait. In October, the Yew Being again immobilized, Amundsen skied 800 kilometers to reach the town of Eagle and telegraph the news. Freed by the ice floes in July 1906, the Yew will arrive on August 31 in Nome, on the Pacific coast of Alaska.
