Northwest Passage

Roald Amundsen · 1903 CE – 1906 CE · Earth

Locate the north magnetic pole and take a ship through the Northwest Passage from end to end.

Historical context

For three centuries Europeans had looked for a sea route round the north of America. Franklin’s two ships were lost on it in the 1840s, and the searches that followed charted most of its channels, but no ship had sailed it from end to end. Roald Amundsen, then thirty, took a 47-ton herring sloop and six men, aiming both at the passage and at a question of science: the present position of the north magnetic pole. He spent two winters at Gjøa Haven on King William Island, where Netsilik and Ogluli families taught the crew to dress in reindeer skin and build snow houses, and a third at King Point on the Yukon coast. The voyage is told in his book The North West Passage, published in English in 1908.

The voyage, step by step

1. Departure from Christiania

   16 June 1903

   On the night of 16 June 1903 Roald Amundsen casts off from Christiania, now Oslo, in a small sloop, the Gjøa, with six companions, to find the north magnetic pole and sail the Northwest Passage.

2. Past Greenland

   25 July 1903

   After passing between Fair Isle and the Orkneys and rounding Cape Farewell, the Gjøa takes on dogs and stores at Godhavn on Disko Island, crosses Melville Bay and reaches Beechey Island, Franklin’s last safe winter harbour.

3. Winter at Gjøa Haven

   1904 CE

   From September 1903 to August 1905 the Gjøa lies in a harbour on King William Island, Uqsuqtuuq in Inuktitut, while the crew measures the earth’s magnetism and learns from the Netsilik and their neighbours how to dress, travel and build snow houses.

4. Through the passage

   1905 CE

   Leaving Gjøa Haven on 13 August 1905, the Gjøa feels her way through Simpson Strait and the islands of Queen Maud Gulf to Cape Colborne, the last unsailed link, meets a whaler from San Francisco in the Beaufort Sea, and is frozen in at King Point.

5. First complete transit

   31 August 1906

   On 31 August 1906 the Gjøa reaches Nome, Alaska, the first ship to have sailed the Northwest Passage from end to end: Amundsen has completed the first full Northwest Passage.

Outcome

After two winters of magnetic observations at Gjøa Haven, where the crew learned from the Netsilik, and a third at King Point, the Gjøa reached Nome on 31 August 1906, the first ship to have sailed the Northwest Passage from end to end.

Roald Amundsen

Norwegian polar explorer who led the first expedition to reach the South Pole and the first confirmed traverse of the Northwest Passage.

Read on Wikipedia

Sources

• The North West Passage: being the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship ‘Gjøa’ 1903–1907, vol. 1Roald Amundsen · Archibald Constable, London; Internet Archive · 1908
• The North West Passage: being the record of a voyage of exploration of the ship ‘Gjøa’ 1903–1907, vol. 2Roald Amundsen · Archibald Constable, London; Internet Archive · 1908
• The Gjøa Expedition 1903–1906The Fram Museum, Oslo
• Roald Amundsen — Wikipedia

Continue exploring

• South Pole expeditionRoald Amundsen · 1910 CE – 1912 CE
• North Pole expeditionMatthew Henson · 1908 CE – 1909 CE
• North Pole attemptRobert Peary · 1908 CE – 1909 CE
• Terra Nova expeditionRobert Falcon Scott · 1910 CE – 1913 CE