The Search for the Northwest Passage
Roald Amundsen
At the turn of the 20th century, a young Norwegian – in a small fishing boat with a crew of seamen who had a great deal of Arctic experience – fulfilled a childhood dream when he set sail to find the elusive Northwest Passage.
Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) had always been fascinated by the story of the Franklin expedition, but rejected the British captain’s large-scale approach. Instead, he studied survival techniques honed by his own countryman, Fridtjof Nansen (1861-1930), who had learned from those who lived and worked in the frozen north, and by Dr John Rae, who had charted vast areas of the northern Canada on foot while living off the land.
Amundsen's preparations led him into serious debt. His little boat, the Gjøa, was in danger of being impounded when, one June afternoon in 1903, the expedition sailed out of Oslo.
The Norwegians arrived at Beechey Island later that summer. Then, like Franklin, Amundsen sailed down Peel Sound to King William Island. With the compass no longer working properly, he navigated by the stars 'like the Vikings'. That winter, the ice-bound ship remained south of the island, at a place now called Gjøa Haven.
Here, Amundsen became fascinated by the way the Inuit exploited their environment to survive. They wore warm caribou (reindeer) skins, built well-insulated houses of snow blocks and travelled on sleds, pulled by dogs. (Amundsen would use this knowledge when, in 1911, he became the first to reach the South Pole.)
Despite the growing discontentment of his crew (exacerbated by Amundsen forbidding affairs with Inuit women), the Gjøa remained off King William Island until August 1905 while its captain learned as much as he could from the Inuit. Then the expedition set sail again, along a shallow, uncharted channel, risking rocks as well as ice.
At last, on 17 August, they sighted a whaling ship from San Francisco. They had completed the Northwest Passage.
