Across the Top of the World

A Renewal in the Search for the Northwest Passage, 1815

The search for the Northwest Passage is a story of heroism, ignorance, national pride and disaster. A map of the NWT still shows the importance of this quest in shaping the North. Many place names and communities in the NWT are named for early explorers in quest of the passage. The Northwest Passage was primarily a British endeavour and involved men such as Henry Hudson, Samuel Hearne, Edward Parry and John Rae. Although the search for the Northwest Passage had begun with Martin Frobisher's arrival in 1576, it was the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 that provided the ships and the person-power required for an exhaustive search.

John Barrow, the Second Secretary of the Navy, employed his idle sailors and officers in the search for a navigable route through the North that could be used as a commercial seaway. Along with sending sailors into the northern sea, the Admirality also engaged Sir John Franklin to lead an expedition overland through much of the modern day NWT to map the Arctic coastline. Franklin's journey of 1821-2 led to death and disaster, but it did not stop the British, in the mid-1800's, from sending several expeditions to complete the passage, among them the even greater disaster of Sir John Franklin's final expedition in 1845. It was not until 1906, that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen successfully navigated the passage.