Page "Northwest Passage" Paragraph 4

Before the Little Ice Age, Norwegian Vikings sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island and Ruin Island for hunting expeditions and trading with the Inuit groups who already inhabited the region.

Between the end of the 15th century and the 20th century, colonial powers from Europe 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, as in 1493 to defuse trade disputes, Pope Alexander VI split the discovered world in two between Spain and Portugal ; thus France, the Netherlands, and England were left without a sea route to Asia, either via Africa or South America, unless their ships defied the ban and explored such waters regardless ( they did, and the ban became unenforceable ).

England called the hypothetical northern 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 numerous 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 sloop Gjøa.

Since that date, several fortified ships have made the journey.