As a result of their westward explorations and their settlement of Greenland, the
Vikings
sailed as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island for hunting expeditions and trading with Inuit groups. The subsequent arrival of the Little Ice Age is thought to have been one of the reasons that European seafaring into the Northwest Passage ceased until the late 15th century.
Strait of Anián In 1539,
Hernán Cortés commissioned
Francisco de Ulloa to sail along the
Baja California Peninsula on the western coast of North America. Ulloa concluded that the
Gulf of California was the southernmost section of a strait supposedly linking the Pacific with the
Gulf of Saint Lawrence. His voyage perpetuated the notion of the
Island of California and saw the beginning of a search for the Strait of Anián. The strait probably took its name from Ania, a Chinese province mentioned in a 1559 edition of
Marco Polo's book; it first appears on a map issued by Italian
cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi about 1562. Five years later Bolognino Zaltieri issued a map showing a narrow and crooked Strait of Anian separating Asia from the Americas. The strait grew in European imagination as an easy sea lane linking Europe with the residence of
Khagan (the Great Khan) in
Cathay (northern China). Cartographers and seamen tried to demonstrate its reality. Sir
Francis Drake sought the western entrance in 1579. The
Greek pilot
Juan de Fuca, sailing from Acapulco (in Mexico) under the flag of the Spanish crown, claimed he had sailed the strait from the Pacific to the
North Sea and back in 1592. The Spaniard
Bartholomew de Fonte claimed to have sailed from Hudson Bay to the Pacific via the strait in 1640.
Northern Atlantic 's men and
Inuit, The first recorded attempt to discover the Northwest Passage was the east–west voyage of
John Cabot in 1497, sent by
Henry VII in search of a direct route to the
Orient. In 1524,
Charles V sent
Estêvão Gomes to find a northern Atlantic passage to the
Spice Islands. An English expedition was launched in 1576 by
Martin Frobisher, who took three trips west to what is now the
Canadian Arctic in order to find the passage.
Frobisher Bay, which he first charted, is named after him. As part of another expedition, in July 1583 Sir
Humphrey Gilbert, who had written a treatise on the discovery of the passage and was a backer of Frobisher, claimed the territory of
Newfoundland for the English crown. On August 8, 1585, the English explorer
John Davis entered
Cumberland Sound, Baffin Island. The major rivers on the east coast were also explored in case they could lead to a transcontinental passage.
Jacques Cartier's explorations of the
Saint Lawrence River in 1535 were initiated in hope of finding a way through the continent. Cartier became persuaded that the St. Lawrence was the Passage; when he found the way blocked by rapids at what is now
Montreal, he was so certain that these rapids were all that was keeping him from China (in French,
la Chine), that he named the rapids for China.
Samuel de Champlain renamed them Sault Saint-Louis in 1611, but the name was changed to
Lachine Rapids in the mid-19th century. In 1602,
George Weymouth became the first European to explore what would later be called Hudson Strait when he sailed into the Strait. Weymouth's expedition to find the Northwest Passage was funded jointly by the British
East India Company and the
Muscovy Company.
Discovery was the same ship used by
Henry Hudson on his final voyage.
John Knight, employed by the British East India Company and the Muscovy Company, set out in 1606 to follow up on Weymouth's discoveries and find the Northwest Passage. After his ship ran aground and was nearly crushed by ice, Knight disappeared while searching for a better anchorage. In 1609, Henry Hudson sailed up what is now called the
Hudson River in search of the Passage; encouraged by the saltiness of the water in the estuary, he reached present-day
Albany, New York, before giving up. On September 14, 1609, Hudson entered the
Tappan Zee while sailing upstream from
New York Harbor. At first, Hudson believed the widening of the river indicated that he had found the Northwest Passage. He proceeded upstream as far as present-day
Troy before concluding that no such
strait existed there. He later explored the Arctic and Hudson Bay. In 1611, while in
James Bay, Hudson's crew mutinied. They set Hudson and his teenage son John, along with seven sick, infirm, or loyal crewmen, adrift in a small open boat. He was never seen again. The only account is by one of the mutineers,
Abacuk Pricket. A mission was sent out in 1612, again in
Discovery, commanded by Sir
Thomas Button to find Henry Hudson and continue through the Northwest Passage. After failing to find Hudson, and exploring the west coast of Hudson Bay, Button returned home due to illness in the crew. In 1614, William Gibbons attempted to find the Passage, but was turned back by ice. The next year, 1615,
Robert Bylot, a survivor of Hudson's crew, returned to Hudson Strait in
Discovery, but was turned back by ice. Bylot tried again in 1616 with
William Baffin. They sailed as far as
Lancaster Sound and reached 77°45′ North latitude, a record which stood for 236 years, before being blocked by ice. On May 9, 1619, under the auspices of
King Christian IV of
Denmark–Norway,
Jens Munk set out with 65 men and the king's two ships,
Einhörningen (Unicorn), a small
frigate, and
Lamprenen (Lamprey), a sloop, which were outfitted under his own supervision. His mission was to discover the Northwest Passage to the Indies and China. Munk penetrated Davis Strait as far north as 69°, found Frobisher Bay, and then spent almost a month fighting his way through Hudson Strait. In September 1619, he found the entrance to Hudson Bay and spent the winter near the mouth of the Churchill River. Cold,
famine, and
scurvy destroyed so many of his men that only he and two other men survived. With these men, he sailed for home with
Lamprey on July 16, 1620, reaching
Bergen, Norway, on September 20, 1620.
René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the
sailing ship, , in his quest to find the Northwest Passage via the upper
Great Lakes. He made his way across
Lake Erie and
Lake Huron, making port on
Mackinac Island before landing at Washington Island at the mouth of
Green Bay to trade for furs with
Pottawatomie Indians. La Salle stayed behind while the ship sailed back to Mackinac with the furs.
Le Griffon disappeared in 1679 on the return trip of her maiden voyage. In the spring of 1682, La Salle made his famous voyage down the
Mississippi River to the
Gulf of Mexico. La Salle led an expedition from France in 1684 to establish a
French colony on the Gulf of Mexico. He was murdered by his followers in 1687.
Henry Ellis, born in Ireland, was part of a company aiming to discover the Northwest Passage in May 1746. After the difficult extinction of a fire on board the ship, he sailed to Greenland, where he traded goods with the Inuit on July 8, 1746. He crossed to the town of Fort Nelson and spent the summer on the
Hayes River. He renewed his efforts in June 1747, without success, before returning to England. In 1772, the English fur trader
Samuel Hearne travelled overland northwest from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean, thereby proving that there was no strait connecting Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean.
Northern Pacific , showing a fictional Northwest Passage|thumbnail Most Northwest Passage expeditions originated in Europe or on the east coast of North America, seeking to traverse the Passage in the westbound direction. Some progress was made in exploring the western reaches of the imagined passage. In 1728
Vitus Bering, a Danish-born Russian navy officer, used the strait first discovered by
Semyon Dezhnyov in 1648 but later accredited to and named after Bering (the
Bering Strait). He concluded that North America and Russia were separate land masses by sailing between them. In 1741 with Lieutenant
Aleksei Chirikov, he explored seeking further lands beyond
Siberia. While they were separated, Chirikov discovered several of the
Aleutian Islands while Bering charted the Alaskan region. His ship was wrecked off the
Kamchatka Peninsula, as many of his crew were disabled by scurvy. The Spanish made several voyages to the northwest coast of North America during the late 18th century. Determining whether a Northwest Passage existed was one of the motives for their efforts. Among the voyages that involved careful searches for a Passage included the 1775 and 1779 voyages of
Juan Francisco de la Bodega y Quadra. The journal of
Francisco Antonio Mourelle, who served as Quadra's second in command in 1775, fell into English hands. It was translated and published in London, stimulating exploration. Captain
James Cook made use of the journal during his explorations of the region. In 1791
Alessandro Malaspina sailed to
Yakutat Bay, Alaska, which was rumoured to be a Passage. In 1790 and 1791
Francisco de Eliza led several exploring voyages into the
Strait of Juan de Fuca, searching for a possible Northwest Passage and finding the
Strait of Georgia. To fully explore this new inland sea, an expedition under
Dionisio Alcalá Galiano was sent in 1792. He was explicitly ordered to explore all channels that might turn out to be a Northwest Passage.
Cook and Vancouver In 1776, Captain James Cook was dispatched by the
Admiralty in
Great Britain on an expedition to explore the Passage. A 1745 act, when extended in 1775, promised a £20,000 prize for whoever discovered the passage. Initially the Admiralty had wanted
Charles Clerke to lead the expedition, with Cook (in retirement following his exploits in the Pacific) acting as a consultant. However, Cook had researched Bering's expeditions, and the Admiralty ultimately placed their faith in the veteran explorer to lead, with Clerke accompanying him. After journeying through the Pacific, to make an attempt from the west, Cook began at
Nootka Sound in April 1778. He headed north along the coastline, charting the lands and searching for the regions sailed by the Russians 40 years previously. The Admiralty's orders had commanded the expedition to ignore all inlets and rivers until they reached a
latitude of
65°N. Cook, however, failed to make any progress in sighting a Northwestern Passage. Various officers on the expedition, including
William Bligh,
George Vancouver, and
John Gore, thought the existence of a route was 'improbable'. Before reaching 65°N they found the coastline pushing them further south, but Gore convinced Cook to sail on into the
Cook Inlet in the hope of finding the route. They continued to the limits of the Alaskan peninsula and the start of the chain of Aleutian Islands. Despite reaching
70°N, they encountered nothing but icebergs. This conclusion was supported by the evidence of
Alexander MacKenzie, who explored the Arctic and Pacific Oceans in 1793.
19th century ''), 1823–1824, a painting by
Caspar David Friedrich showing a shipwreck at right. It was inspired by
William Edward Parry's account from his 1819–1820 expedition.
Kunsthalle Hamburg, Germany. In the first half of the 19th century, some parts of the Northwest Passage (north of the Bering Strait) were explored separately by many expeditions, including those by
John Ross,
Elisha Kent Kane,
William Edward Parry, and
James Clark Ross; overland expeditions were also led by
John Franklin,
George Back,
Peter Warren Dease,
Thomas Simpson, and
John Rae. In 1826
Frederick William Beechey explored the north coast of Alaska, discovering Point Barrow. Sir
Robert McClure was credited with the discovery of the Northwest Passage in 1851 when he looked across
McClure Strait from
Banks Island and viewed
Melville Island. However, this strait was not navigable to ships at that time. The only usable route linking the entrances of Lancaster Sound and
Dolphin and Union Strait was discovered by
John Rae in 1854.
Franklin expedition , the leader of the lost 1845 expedition In 1845, a lavishly equipped two-ship expedition led by Sir
John Franklin sailed to the Canadian Arctic to chart the last unknown swaths of the Northwest Passage. Confidence was high, as they estimated there was less than remaining of unexplored Arctic mainland coast. When the ships failed to return, relief expeditions and search parties explored the Canadian Arctic, which resulted in a thorough charting of the region, along with a possible passage. Many artifacts from the expedition were found over the next century and a half, including notes that the ships were ice-locked in 1846 near
King William Island, about halfway through the passage, and unable to break free. Records showed Franklin died in 1847 and Captain
Francis Crozier took over command. In 1848 the expedition abandoned the two ships and its members tried to escape south across the
tundra by
sledge. Although some of the crew may have survived into the early 1850s, no evidence has ever been found of any survivors. In 1853, explorer
John Rae was told by local Inuit about the disastrous fate of Franklin's expedition, but his reports were not welcomed in Britain on account of his reports of
cannibalism amongst the surviving crews.
Starvation, exposure and scurvy all contributed to the men's deaths. In 1981
Owen Beattie, an anthropologist from the
University of Alberta, examined remains from sites associated with the expedition. This led to further investigations and the examination of tissue and bone from the frozen bodies of three seamen,
John Torrington,
William Braine and
John Hartnell, exhumed from the
permafrost of
Beechey Island. Laboratory tests revealed
high concentrations of lead in all three (the expedition carried 8,000 tins of food sealed with a lead-based
solder).) This was an astonishing feat for that day and age, and McClure was knighted and promoted in rank. (He was made
rear-admiral in 1867.) Both he and his crew also shared £10,000 awarded them by the
British Parliament. In July 2010 Canadian archaeologists found his ship, HMS
Investigator, fairly intact but sunk about below the surface.
John Rae The expeditions by Franklin and McClure were in the tradition of British exploration: well-funded ship expeditions using modern technology, and usually including
British Naval personnel. By contrast,
John Rae was an employee of the
Hudson's Bay Company, which operated a far-flung trade network and drove exploration of the Canadian North. They adopted a pragmatic approach and tended to be land-based. While Franklin and McClure tried to explore the passage by sea, Rae explored by land. He used
dog sleds and techniques of surviving in the environment which he had learned from the native Inuit. The Franklin and McClure expeditions each employed hundreds of personnel and multiple ships. John Rae's expeditions included fewer than ten people and succeeded. Rae was also the explorer with the best safety record, having lost only one man in years of traversing Arctic lands. In 1854, Rae returned to the cities with information from the Inuit about the disastrous fate of the Franklin expedition.
Amundsen expedition was the first to sail through the Northwest Passage in 1903–1906. The first explorer to traverse the Northwest Passage solely by ship was the Norwegian explorer
Roald Amundsen. In a three-year journey between 1903 and 1906, Amundsen explored the passage with a crew of six. Amundsen, who had sailed to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed the voyage in the converted 45
net register tonnage () herring boat
Gjøa.
Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions and had a shallow draft. Amundsen intended to hug the shore, live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and had determined that he needed to have a tiny crew to make this work. (Trying to support much larger crews had contributed to the catastrophic failure of John Franklin's expedition fifty years previously, losing two ships and their crews). The ship's shallow draft was intended to help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Amundsen set out from
Kristiania (Oslo) in June 1903 and was west of the
Boothia Peninsula by late September.
Gjøa was put into a natural harbour on the south shore of King William Island; by October 3 she was iced in. There the expedition remained for nearly two years, with the expedition members learning from the local Inuit and undertaking measurements to determine the location of the
North Magnetic Pole. The harbour, now known as
Gjoa Haven, later developed as the only permanent settlement on the island. After completing the Northwest Passage portion of this trip and having anchored near
Herschel Island, Amundsen skied to the city of
Eagle, Alaska. He sent a telegram announcing his success and skied the return to rejoin his companions. Although his chosen east–west route, via the
Rae Strait, contained young ice and thus was navigable, some of the waterways were extremely shallow ( deep), making the route commercially impractical.
Later expeditions The first traversal of the Northwest Passage via dog sled was accomplished by Greenlander
Knud Rasmussen while on the Fifth Thule Expedition (1921–1924). Rasmussen and two
Greenland Inuit travelled from the Atlantic to the Pacific over the course of 16 months via dog sled. Canadian
Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer
Henry Larsen was the second to sail the passage, crossing west to east, leaving Vancouver on June 23, 1940, and arriving at
Halifax on October 11, 1942. More than once on this trip, he was uncertain whether , a Royal Canadian Mounted Police "ice-fortified"
schooner, would survive the pressures of the sea ice. At one point, Larsen wondered "if we had come this far only to be crushed like a nut on a shoal and then buried by the ice." The ship and all but one of her crew survived the winter on
Boothia Peninsula. Each of the men on the trip was awarded a medal by Canada's sovereign,
King George VI, in recognition of this feat of Arctic navigation. Later in 1944, Larsen's return trip was far more swift than his first. He made the trip in 86 days to sail back from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Vancouver, British Columbia. He set a record for traversing the route in a single season. The ship, after extensive upgrades, followed a more northerly, partially uncharted route. In 1954, completed the east-to-west transit, under the command of Captain O.C.S. Robertson, conducting hydrographic soundings along the route. She was the first
warship (and the first
deep draft ship) to transit the Northwest Passage and the first warship to
circumnavigate North America. In 1956, HMCS
Labrador again completed the east-to-west transit, this time under the command of Captain T.C. Pullen. On July 1, 1957, the
United States Coast Guard Cutter departed in company with and to search for a deep-draft channel through the Arctic Ocean and to collect
hydrographic information. The US Coast Guard Squadron was escorted through Bellot Strait and the Eastern Arctic by HMCS
Labrador. In 1969, SS
Manhattan made the passage, accompanied by the Canadian icebreakers and . The U.S. Coast Guard icebreakers and also sailed in support of the expedition. In 1981 as part of the
Transglobe Expedition,
Ranulph Fiennes and
Charles R. Burton completed the Northwest Passage. They left
Tuktoyaktuk on July 26, 1981, in the open
Boston Whaler and reached
Tanquary Fiord on August 31, 1981. Their journey was the first open-boat transit from west to east and covered around , taking a route through Dolphin and Union Strait following the south coast of Victoria and King William islands, north to Resolute Bay via Franklin Strait and Peel Sound, around the south and east coasts of Devon Island, through Hell Gate and across Norwegian Bay to Eureka, Greely Bay and the head of Tanquary Fiord. Once they reached Tanquary Fiord, they had to trek via Lake Hazen to Alert before setting up their winter base camp. In 1984, the commercial passenger vessel (which sank in the
Antarctic Ocean in 2007) became the first
cruise ship to navigate the Northwest Passage. In July 1986, Jeff MacInnis and Mike Beedell set out on an
catamaran called
Perception on a 100-day sail, west to east, through the Northwest Passage. This pair was the first to sail the passage, although they had the benefit of doing so over a couple of summers. In July 1986,
David Scott Cowper set out from England in a
lifeboat named
Mabel El Holland, and survived three Arctic winters in the Northwest Passage before reaching the Bering Strait in August 1989. He continued around the world via the
Cape of Good Hope to return to England on September 24, 1990. His was the first vessel to circumnavigate the world via the Northwest Passage. On July 1, 2000, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrol vessel , having assumed the name
St Roch II, departed Vancouver on a "Voyage of Rediscovery."
Nadons mission was to circumnavigate North America via the Northwest Passage and the Panama Canal, recreating the epic voyage of her predecessor,
St. Roch. The Voyage of Rediscovery was intended to raise awareness concerning
St. Roch and kick off the fund-raising efforts necessary to ensure the continued preservation of
St. Roch. The voyage was organized by the
Vancouver Maritime Museum and supported by a variety of corporate sponsors and agencies of the Canadian government.
Nadon is an aluminum, catamaran-hulled, high-speed patrol vessel. To make the voyage possible, she was escorted and supported by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker . The Coast Guard vessel was chartered by the Voyage of Rediscovery and crewed by volunteers. Throughout the voyage, she provided a variety of necessary services, including provisions and spares, fuel and water, helicopter facilities, and ice escort; she also conducted oceanographic research during the voyage. The Voyage of Rediscovery was completed in five and a half months, with
Nadon reaching Vancouver on December 16, 2000. On September 1, 2001,
Northabout, an aluminium
sailboat with diesel engine, built and captained by Jarlath Cunnane, completed the Northwest Passage east-to-west from Ireland to the Bering Strait. The voyage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was completed in 24 days. Cunnane cruised in
Northabout in Canada for two years before returning to Ireland in 2005 via the Northeast Passage; he completed the first east-to-west circumnavigation of the pole by a single sailboat. The Northeast Passage return along the coast of Russia was slower, starting in 2004, requiring an ice stop and winter over in
Khatanga, Siberia. He returned to Ireland via the Norwegian coast in October 2005. On January 18, 2006, the
Cruising Club of America awarded Jarlath Cunnane their Blue Water Medal, an award for "meritorious seamanship and adventure upon the sea displayed by amateur sailors of all nationalities." On July 18, 2003, a father-and-son team, Richard and Andrew Wood, with Zoe Birchenough, sailed the yacht
Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait. Two months later she sailed into the Davis Strait to become the first British yacht to transit the Northwest Passage from west to east. She also became the only British vessel to complete the Northwest Passage in one season, as well as the only British sailing yacht to return from there to British waters. In 2006, a scheduled cruise liner () successfully ran the Northwest Passage, helped by
satellite images telling the location of sea ice. On May 19, 2007, a French sailor, Sébastien Roubinet, and one other crew member left
Anchorage, Alaska, in
Babouche, a ice catamaran designed to sail on water and slide over ice. The goal was to navigate west to east through the Northwest Passage by sail only. Following a journey of more than , Roubinet reached Greenland on September 9, 2007, thereby completing the first Northwest Passage voyage made in one season without engine. In April 2009, planetary scientist
Pascal Lee and a team of four on the
Northwest Passage Drive Expedition drove the
HMP Okarian Humvee rover a record-setting on sea-ice from
Kugluktuk to
Cambridge Bay,
Nunavut, the longest distance driven on sea-ice in a road vehicle. The HMP
Okarian was being ferried from the North American mainland to the
Haughton–Mars Project (HMP) Research Station on
Devon Island, where it would be used as a simulator of future pressurized rovers for astronauts on the
Moon and
Mars. The HMP
Okarian was eventually flown from Cambridge Bay to
Resolute Bay in May 2009, and then driven again on sea-ice by Lee and a team of five from
Resolute to the West coast of Devon Island in May 2010. The HMP
Okarian reached the HMP Research Station in July 2011. The Northwest Passage Drive Expedition is captured in the motion picture documentary film
Passage To Mars (2016). In 2009, sea ice conditions were such that at least nine small vessels and two cruise ships completed the transit of the Northwest Passage. These trips included one by Eric Forsyth on board the Westsail sailboat
Fiona, a boat he built in the 1980s. Self-financed, Forsyth, a retired engineer from the
Brookhaven National Laboratory, and winner of the Cruising Club of America's Blue Water Medal, sailed the Canadian Archipelago with sailor Joey Waits, airline captain Russ Roberts and carpenter David Wilson. After successfully sailing the Passage, the 77-year-old Forsyth completed the circumnavigation of North America, returning to his home port on
Long Island, New York. Cameron Dueck and his crew aboard the sailing yacht
Silent Sound also transited in the summer of 2009. Their voyage began in Victoria, BC, on June 6, and they arrived in Halifax on October 10. Dueck wrote a book about the voyage called
The New Northwest Passage. In August–September 2010, Graeme Kendall (New Zealand) sailed the
Astral Express through the Northwest Passage. He was the first person to sail solo non-stop through the passage. He began in Lancaster Sound on August 27 and ended 12 days later at Point Barrow, Alaska, on September 9. The trip covered . It was part of a circumnavigation that started and ended in New Zealand. On September 9, 2010,
Bear Grylls and a team of five completed a point-to-point navigation between
Pond Inlet and Tuktoyaktuk in the
Northwest Territories on a
rigid inflatable boat (RIB). The expedition drew attention to how the effects of
global warming made this journey possible and raised funds for the Global Angels charity. In 2011, Australians Chris Bray and Jess Taunton sailed their
junk-rigged yacht,
Teleport, through the passage, navigating from
Halifax to
Cambridge Bay. Teleport Shoal, at , off the
Tasmania Islands, commemorates the vessel. On August 30, 2012
Sailing yacht , , an English SY, successfully completed the Northwest Passage in
Nome, Alaska, while sailing a northern route never sailed by a sailing pleasure vessel before. After six cruising seasons in the
Arctic (Greenland, Baffin Bay, Devon Island,
Kane Basin, Lancaster Sound,
Peel Sound, Regent Sound) and four seasons in the South (
Antarctic Peninsula,
Patagonia,
Falkland Islands,
South Georgia), SY
Billy Budd, owned by and under the command of an Italian sporting enthusiast, Mariacristina Rapisardi. Crewed by Marco Bonzanigo, five Italian friends, one Australian, one Dutch, one South African, and one New Zealander, it sailed through the Northwest Passage. The northernmost route was chosen.
Billy Budd sailed through the
Parry Channel, Viscount Melville Sound and Prince of Wales Strait, a channel long and wide which flows south into the
Amundsen Gulf. During the passage
Billy Budd – likely a first for a pleasure vessel – anchored in Winter Harbour in Melville Island, the very same site where almost 200 years ago
Sir William Parry was blocked by ice and forced to winter. On August 29, 2012, the Swedish yacht
Belzebub II, a fibreglass cutter captained by Canadian Nicolas Peissel, Swede Edvin Buregren and Morgan Peissel, became the first sailboat in history to sail through McClure Strait, part of a journey of achieving the most northerly Northwest Passage.
Belzebub II departed Newfoundland following the coast of Greenland to
Qaanaaq before tracking the sea ice to
Grise Fiord, Canada's most northern community. From there the team continued through Parry Channel into McClure Strait and the Beaufort Sea, tracking the highest latitudes of 2012's record sea ice depletion before completing their Northwest Passage September 14, 2012. The expedition received extensive media coverage, including recognition by former U.S. Vice President
Al Gore. The accomplishment is recorded in the Polar Scott Institute's record of Northwest Passage Transits and recognized by the Explorers Club and the Royal Canadian Geographic Society. At 18:45 GMT on September 18, 2012,
Best Explorer, a steel cutter , skipper Nanni Acquarone, passing between the two Diomedes, was the first Italian sailboat to complete the Northwest Passage along the classical Amundsen route. Twenty-two Italian amateur sailors took part of the trip, in eight legs from
Tromsø, Norway, to
King Cove, Alaska, totalling . Later in 2019
Best Explorer skippered again by Nanni Acquarone became the first Italian sailboat to circumnavigate the Arctic sailing north of Siberia from
Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky to
Tromsø and the second ever to do it clockwise. Setting sail from Nome, Alaska, on August 18, 2012, and reaching
Nuuk, Greenland, on September 12, 2012, became the largest passenger vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. The ship, carrying 481 passengers, for 26 days and at sea, followed in the path of Captain Roald Amundsen.
The World transit of the Northwest Passage was documented by
National Geographic photographer Raul Touzon. In September 2013, became the first commercial
bulk carrier to transit the Northwest Passage. She was carrying a cargo of of
coking coal from
Port Metro Vancouver, Canada, to the Finnish
Port of Pori, more than would have been possible via the traditional Panama Canal route. The Northwest Passage shortened the distance by compared to traditional route via the Panama Canal. In August and September 2016 a cruise ship was sailed through the Northwest Passage. The ship
Crystal Serenity, (with 1,000 passengers, and 600 crew) left Seward, Alaska, used Amundsen's route and reached New York on September 17. Tickets for the 32-day trip started at $22,000 and were quickly sold out. The trip was repeated in 2017. In 2017 33 vessels made a complete transit, breaking the prior record of 20 in 2012. In September 2018, sailing yacht
Infinity (a 36.6 m ketch) and her 22-person crew successfully sailed through the Northwest Passage. This was part of their mission to plant the flag of Earth on the remaining Arctic ice. Supported by the EarthToday initiative, this voyage was a symbol for future global collaboration against climate change. The flag of Planet Earth was planted on September 21, 2018, the International Day of Peace. From July to October 2023, the Arctic Cowboys, became the first people to kayak the central portion of the Northwest Passage from Pond Inlet to Cape Bathurst, marking them as the first to navigate the Canadian Archipelago completely self-propelled, meaning no motors or sails were used. Additionally, the team completed the expedition in a single season. The expedition was led and organised by West Hansen, along with Jeff Wueste,
Mark Agnew, and Eileen Visser. The four travelled in two tandem kayaks. Agnew was awarded European Adventurer of the Year as a result. ==International waters dispute==