Exploring The Northwest Passage

WITH CLIMATE CHANGE CAUSING SEA ICE TO MELT, CANADA’S INFAMOUS NORTHWEST PASSAGE, WHICH ELUDED NUMEROUS 19TH-CENTURY EXPEDITIONS, IS FINALLY OPENING UP TO EXPLORATION. IT REPRESENTS A VICTORIAN VISION FINALLY REALISED, BUT SHOULD THIS DELICATE MARINE ENVIRONMENT REALLY BE OUR NEXT TOURISM FRONTIER?

- Mark Stratton

 

Beechey Island is monochrome, like a charcoal etching. Drifts of fresh snow stripe its rising foreshore like zebra hide. The hulking granite cliffs are blacker than night. The beach curves away towards neighbouring Devon Island, where a porcelain white glacier glints through the spitting sleet: a fitting setting for a graveyard.

In 1845, John Franklin sailed to the Canadian Arctic in a bid to chart the last unknown section of the Northwest Passage. He was seeking the ultimate prize of the era: a seaway between the Atlantic and Pacific that would mean quick shipping routes to Asia. I was following the route on a 16-day adventure cruise. Judging from the headstones poking above the permafrost, it’s clear that Franklin didn’t get very far. Arctic historian Ken McGoogan, a guest lecturer on board our vessel, Ocean Endeavour, explains how Franklin’s ships were trapped by sea ice, forcing them to winter here. Three of his crew died that season.

“They were the lucky ones,” says McGoogan. “After the expedition continued south in 1846, the ships became trapped for years and all the crew died of sickness or starvation.”

Ultimately, they resorted to cannibalism — news that shocked British society at the time. Today, as the Arctic’s ice melts and the Victorian dream of a navigable trade route becomes a reality, the Northwest Passage’s Inuit inhabitants and wildlife faces momentous change.