Navigation and trade were the twin forces that created a centuries-long frenzy over the “Northwest Passage”. Crews sailing ever further from European shores were eager to take up the rich trade with East Asia and India that was thriving on overland routes like the famous Silk Road. In the 1490s, Columbus hoped to sail across the ocean from Spain to Asia, but North America lay in the middle of his trans-Atlantic course. Explorers from Europe, and later Canada and the United States, focused on finding a trade route that would help them to link Europe with the riches of eastern Asia and India. They hoped to sail through the northern waters of the Arctic rather than taking the lengthy journey south around Africa’s Cape of Good Hope or Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America.
Spanish claims to South American waters and Portuguese dominance in Africa made global trade a challenge for ships sailing under the flags of other nations. In the 18th century, many expeditions risked the frozen Arctic to search for a northern route from the Atlantic in the east and via the Pacific. The uncharted waters and the geography of volcanic islands, rocky coasts and ice formations made each expedition dangerous.
Legends of a passage persisted, and expeditions by Captains Cook, Bodega y Quadra, Malaspina, Galiano, Valdés, and Vancouver were charged with finding the Passage or disproving the theories about its location. Much of the Pacific Northwest was explored and charted as a result of this search. Even the repeated confirmation in the late 18th century that a navigable Northwest Passage did not exist did not stop expeditions to the ice. A changing global climate is now melting the frozen northern path, forcing Arctic nations to face the realities of global warming and to negotiate the future use of what might be a working Northwest Passage.
