Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Northwest Passage

Starting point is 00:00:00 When European explorers set off from Europe, many of them chased things that didn't exist. The Fountain of Youth, the city of El Dorado, and Prestor John were all things they pursued, but came up empty-handed. However, there was one thing that these European explorers searched for that actually did exist, but not in the way that they had hoped. While it was never historically relevant, it may end up playing a much bigger role in the future. Learn more about the Northwest Passage, its discovery and its future, on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

Starting point is 00:00:28 What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. The story of the Northwest Passage actually begins not in the courts of European monarchs, but in the Ottoman Empire. In the 15th century, the Ottomans had established a monopoly on all trade between Europe and Asia. All of the spices, silks, and other goods that went from east to west or vice versa, whether by land or by sea, had to go through the Ottoman Empire.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Like any good monopolist, the Ottomans used this control of trade routes to their advantage, and this resulted in goods either increasing in price dramatically or being completely eliminated. As I've said in previous episodes, this Ottoman control of trade routes, unbeknownst to anyone at the time, ended up becoming one of the most important events in world history. The monopoly of trade annoyed the Europeans, who sought a way to get around the Ottoman monopoly. The first attempt to get around it was the most obvious. Portuguese explorers set out to sail around the southern tip of Africa to get to Asia. In 1888, Bartolomu Diaz became the first known person to sail around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa. He never went all the way around Africa. He just got far enough to realize that the coast was starting to turn north, declared victory, and headed back. With the knowledge that it was possible to sail around Africa in 1498, Vasco da Gama managed to go all the way, becoming the first

Starting point is 00:02:22 person to sail directly from Europe to India. The route around Africa worked, but it was far from ideal. It was a really long trip. Another group of explorers thought that there might be a shortcut. They figured that if they sailed west, they could go around the world and arrive in Asia without taking the long route around Africa. Christopher Columbus, as you're well aware, tried this and wound up running into the massive landmass that we know as the Americas. Despite the fact that the European powers went on to colonize the Americas, it didn't stop the desire to find a sea route to Asia. In 1520, a Spanish expedition led by Ferdinand Magellan managed to find a route through the archipelago at the bottom of South America, which allowed them to start.

Starting point is 00:03:05 sail around the Americas and eventually to Asia. This became the most common route to sail to the Pacific for most European expeditions. However, it too was fraught with difficulty. It was an even longer route than sailing around Africa, and passing through the Strait of Magellan was extremely dangerous. There were people who thought that there might be an even quicker route to Asia. This route would be north of the Americas rather than south. The idea was actually hatched before the idea of sailing around South America. Europe has a coast on the North Atlantic, so if there was a direct route, something in the north would actually be the quickest route. This hypothetical route became known as the Northwest Passage. The first person to try to lead an expedition to find the Northwest

Starting point is 00:03:51 Passage was the Venetian navigator, sailing under an English flag, John Cabot. He set out to find the Northwest Passage in 1497, just five years after Columbus arrived on the shores of the Americas. Cabot, with a small crew of only 18, managed to make it across the Atlantic, and thought that he had made it to Asia. In reality, he probably ended up in Newfoundland. There's actually been a great deal of debate as to where exactly he made land, but it would have been somewhere along the coast from Maine to Labrador. In 1498, Cabot led an even larger expedition with five ships and 200 men. They set off from England, and were never heard from again. In 1534, the King of France, Francis the first sponsored an expedition to find a route to Asia that Jacques Cartier would lead.

Starting point is 00:04:37 Cartier ended up making three voyages, which took him to Newfoundland and up the St. Lawrence River. Cartier managed to capture an Uriquet chief that he brought back to France, and he spoke of a great river to the west which would lead to riches, which the French assumed meant Asia. In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company hired the English explorer Henry Hudson to make another attempt at finding the Northwest Passage. In 1609, Hudson tried to find a southern, route that would be free of ice. He sailed around Long Island and up the Hudson River that bears his

Starting point is 00:05:07 name. However, that was not the Northwest Passage. In 1610, he had another voyage that went further north, and he managed to sail into another body of water that bears his name, Hudson Bay. Unfortunately, the ship got stuck in ice, the crew mutinied, and they sent Henry Hudson a drift in a rowboat. And he was never heard from again. Despite the failures, people kept trying because every expedition seemed to show a little bit more progress. In 1612, Sir Thomas Button was sent to try to find Hudson, but just ended up exploring the west coast of Hudson Bay. In 1614, William Gibbon tried and failed to find the passage. In 1615, Robert Bylot, who was on the original Hudson expedition, tried to find a passage, and failed. In 1616, Bylot and William Baffin managed to sail to the

Starting point is 00:05:53 northernmost tip of Baffin Island, which was the farthest north anyone would sail for another 236 years. In 1619, the Danish threw their hat into the ring. Yen's monk sailed into Hudson Bay with 65 men and two ships. They became stuck in the ice like everyone else, and most of his crew died from starvation and scurvy. Monk and only two other crew members managed to survive and sail back. In the late 17th century, the French explorer René Robert Cavalier, Soire de La Salle,

Starting point is 00:06:23 tried to find the Northwest Passage through the Great Lakes and ended up traveling down the Mississippi River. But P2 did not find a route. to the Pacific. By the early 18th century, explorers were trying a different tactic. In 1728, Vitis Bering, a Danish navigator employed by the Russian Navy, discovered that Russia and North America were in fact separate and not one contiguous landmass. He discovered the straight, which bears his name today. In the late 18th century, the Spanish tried sailing up the west coast of North America, looking for a northwest passage. The British had a renewed interest and sent Captain James Cook to what is

Starting point is 00:06:59 today Alaska, but he had no luck. It wasn't until 1796 during an expedition led by George Vancouver that the British finally concluded that there was no such passage that could be found south of the Bering Strait. But this was far from the end of it. In the early 19th century, there would be overland expeditions to try to find routes and passages that could be used, and also to map northern Canada and Alaska. Decades of improved mapping in the region finally led to an expedition by Sir John Franklin, which began in 1845. The expedition had very high hopes because there were all but 500 kilometers or 310 miles of unexplored coast in northern Canada. If they could find a way through that unexplored gap,

Starting point is 00:07:42 then they could finally have a northern passage from Europe to Asia. The Franklin expedition had two ships, the HMS Airbus and the HMS Terror, with a combined crew of 128 men. After setting out with such high hopes, they were never heard from again. There were rumors for years from local Inuit people about what actually happened. According to Inuit sources, the expedition was caught in the ice, and then they slowly starved to death, reverting to cannibalism. Skeletons of some of the crew members were actually found in the 1990s,

Starting point is 00:08:13 and both ships were found by divers in 2014. In 1850, Commander Robert McClure and his crew set out in the HMS investigator to find the passage from the west. They sailed all the way around Cape Horn and then up the entire length of the Americas and finally passed through the Bering Strait. They too got stuck in ice and were stranded for three consecutive winters. They were eventually discovered by a team from the HMS Resolute who were traveling by dog sled. The Resolute then became stuck in ice and was abandoned and they had to be rescued by an American whaling ship.

Starting point is 00:08:47 McClure actually ended up making it back to London, having technically been the first person to circumnavigate the Americas, and having traversed the Northwest Passage, albeit by both land and sea and having been rescued twice. He was awarded the prize originally set by the British Parliament for traversing the Northwest Passage. The long-sought achievement of traveling the Northwest Passage by ship, something which had been attempted for over 400 years, finally took place in the early 20th century. In 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Admondson set out with a crew of only six men to sail the passage. His ship was unique in that it was much smaller than all of the previous ships which

Starting point is 00:09:24 had attempted the journey. This allowed him to get closer to the shore where there would be less ice. It also allowed his crew to hunt and fish for food rather than have to rely on supplies. It took them three years, but in 1906, they arrived by ship in Nome, Alaska. Edmondson proved that there was a way to travel from Europe to Asia by sea via a northern route. However, it was nothing like anyone had hoped. Even though the route was short, shorter, the ice and Arctic conditions made the trip take far longer than any other option. It wasn't economically viable. However, there were still attempts. The first person to sail the Northwest Passage in a single season was the Canadian Royal Mounted Police Officer Henry Larson,

Starting point is 00:10:06 who did it in just 86 days in 1944. He sailed from Halifax to Vancouver. In the 1950s, more powerful and larger ships began to make the journey, usually for scientific purposes, mapping the depth of many of the channels. In 1969, a specially built oil tanker made the trip as a test, but the route was still deemed to be economically unviable, and the Alaska pipeline was built instead. More and more ships were able to sail the Northwest Passage for a host of regions. The first was that ships were now faster. They could easily make the entire voyage during the brief window in the summer when the ice was out. Navigation improved. GPS and maps of the ocean floor made it easier to navigate the channels between many of the islands in the Canadian archipelago.

Starting point is 00:10:49 Up-to-date satellite imagery allowed ships to see where ice was so they could just sail around it. And finally, there was just less ice. Sea ice in the Arctic had lessened over the last several decades, meaning that the season for sailing the Northwest Passage increased. This has led to more shipping companies to consider using the Northwest Passage as a legitimate route for sending things between Europe and Asia. In 2010, a Japanese company proposed laying a fiber optic cable between Tokyo and London via the Northwest Passage. In 2013, a specially designed freighter named the Nordic Orion sailed the passage. And in 2016, a full-blown cruise ship, the Crystal Serenity, managed to sail the Northwest Passage

Starting point is 00:11:32 with passengers. One of the biggest problems in the future use of the passage is going to be legal. Canada considers all of the Northwest Passage to be their territorial waters. However, there are special exceptions in international law addressing such shipping straits as the Bosphorus and the Straits of Malacca, where international sea traffic is allowed, even though it would otherwise be in the territorial waters of a country. Other countries, like the United States, believe that the Northwest Passage should be covered by such treaties which cover other international shipping routes. As of the time of this recording, the issue remains unresolved. The Northwest Passage was an almost legendary route for over 400 years. When it was finally proven that it could be sailed, it was shown to have almost no practical value.

Starting point is 00:12:19 However, now in the 21st century, this once useless route between Europe and Asia may have finally had its day. And it only took 500 years. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Peter Bennett and Cameron Kiefer. Today's review comes from listener Little Guy 473632 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Hi, Gary, I'm a huge fan of the rich and enlightening podcast, but I'm only 10 years old, and not in the Completionist Club yet.

Starting point is 00:12:53 But I would like to say that you're doing a great job, and I hope you keep on making entertaining and fun podcasts. Well, thanks, little guy. Just stick with it, and you will be in the Completionist Club before you know it. And when you're done, you are going to be way ahead of all the other kids in your class. Remember, if you leave a review or send me a boostagram, YouTube can have it right on the show.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Northwest Passage

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