HISTORY The : ice, death and heroism

barques, followed by 15 merchant ships a by 10-inch (25cm) belts of timber. There year later, alerted to the possibility of gold. was sheet-iron at the bows, and huge Only one ship was strengthened against beams braced the hulls inside. Each was

OCEAN TRAVELLER the advancing pack ice – the crews of the fitted with a steam locomotive engine

rest desperately improvised with cables, in the hold, linked to a screw propeller. beds, masts and planks. Two ships and 40 They carried enough provisions for three men were lost. Commander years – including books, writing materials concluded there was ‘no passage nor hope and a musical organ. of a passage’. There was no gold, either. On 25 July, the Erebus and Terror were sighted in , waiting for ice HARD LESSONS to clear. They then disappeared utterly. The pattern of search for the Passage It was two years before a rescue was was established. A voyage would set off even considered. Search expeditions in ignorance, in a poorly prepared boat, set out in 1848. Then more. For years, into conditions so foreign and deadly, attempts were made to discover what they returned having learned almost had happened to Franklin, his ships nothing – if they returned at all. Jens and 133 officers and crew. A few Munk’s voyage of 1619, in a frigate and graves were found, and the occasional a sloop, returned one ship and three skeleton; there were even rumours of survivors from a complement of 65. cannibalism, but the mystery remains. It took years to work out a lack of fresh food caused men to die of scurvy. And only SUCCESS after several tales of onshore struggle, Between 1850 and 1854, commander as ships lay covered in three-metre-thick Robert McLure on HMS Investigator ice, was it plain that provisioning for at actually found and traversed the least one long dark winter of -50 degrees Passage from west to east, but as part might be a good idea. And in those seas of of the journey was by sledge over thick shifting ice, charting was hell: a labyrinth ice, celebrations were muted. PHOTOSHOT.COM

TRANSITS THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE TRANSITS THE NORTHWEST of islands, inlets and bays. Where was the In 1903 set off to see After hundreds of years Transit the Northwest Passage – how Northwest Passage? It may not exist. if the magnetic pole had shifted since its of failure by large British easy that sounds. Yet haunting Arcadia’s In 1715, trader set out 70 years before (it had), with explorer vessels, the Northwest Passage was wake are the ghosts of ships crushed into on Albany, carrying 17 crew, with the new six crew on the single-masted, 47-tonne finally navigated in 1906 kindling by pack ice or sunk by bergs the 40-tonne sloop Discovery, carrying 10. Gjøa. It had a small 13hp engine and by Norwegian Roald size of castles. And of sailors who set off He took trade goods, bricks and lime for was provisioned for five years. After two Amundsen in Gjøa ARCADIA (above), a single-masted to the north only to die in shifting ice, or winter shelters and plenty of provisions. winters ice-locked to the south eastern herring boat stricken with scurvy, lost in fog so thick Both were observed in , tip of King William Island, Gjøa navigated they couldn’t see the end of their own before vanishing. Remains were found the shallow rocky waters into the Beaufort vessel. And of endless winters, huddled in on 50 years later; the ships Sea and through the south end of Victoria the dark, bored and starving, hoping more were discovered five fathoms down. Strait to Cambridge Bay. A larger ship for an escape back home than ever finding By 1745 the British government was could not have made it. After centuries of a mythical passage across that awful sea. offering £20,000 to anyone who could failure by mighty British ships in search discover the Passage. Some tried to find of trade and treasure, it is ironic that the TRADE AND TREASURE its Pacific entrance; , in the route was navigated by a Norwegian, in a For hundreds of years, the search for a Resolution, was one of these. He fumbled little herring boat, on a mission of science. shortcut between Europe and Asia was his way up the west coast of Alaska, using With all routes charted, and ice all about trade. The region of the the wrong maps, before meeting a wall retreating, the Passage holds fewer Circle was almost completely uncharted, of pack ice. After four years away, he was terrors than it did. But proof it could still and visited only by whalers. But in 1572, a killed by natives on the voyage home. bite came in 1969, when an oil company revision of Gerard Mercator’s renowned sent a specially strengthened tanker, the map of the world included three imagined FRANKLIN SS Manhattan, through the Passage to ships heading towards the Arctic – wishful The most famous victim of the Northwest investigate commercial possibilities. On thinking, and a call to action. Passage is Sir , commander the return voyage, ice punched a hole In 1576, privateer of a voyage in 1845. His ships, Erebus and the size of a house through the hull. The responded, setting off with two 25-tonne Terror, were bomb vessels strengthened company built a pipeline instead.

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