FOUND: THE NORTHWEST PASSAGE
Neuberger, Capt. Richard L.
Found: The Northwest Passage By Copt RICHARD L. NEUBERGER WITH the world rocked by war, people tend to believe that all the other undertakings of mankind cease to be. Yet books are written, babies...
...Stefansson also has cited the fact that transportation between the North Pacific and North Atlantic would only be one-third as long via the Northwest Passage as via the Panama Canal...
...He was buried beneath a lonely rock cairn overlooking Pasley Bay...
...They finally came down the bleak coast of Baff inland and so at last ended their voyage at Halifax...
...This route was the Northwest Passage, the legendary seaway linking the oceans via the Arctic The round-trip voyage of the St...
...Roch, the first such argosy in history, has demonstrated that perhaps, steel ice breakers can be used to crack open the Polar ice pack and establish a great new sea lane...
...One of the most significant explorations of the past century has just been concluded, an exploration which most people overlooked because it took place at the same time that the great nations of the world are blasting each other with shot and shell...
...This time it required not 850 days as had the cruise from Pacific to Atlantic, but a mere 86 days...
...But early in the present century the Panama Canal was completed...
...Still a third route remained—a route which was yet to be used...
...Then she made the return trip, again braving the ice pack which fringes the gables of North America...
...A few rods at a time, dodging floes and keeping out of blind leads, they snaked and twisted the St...
...He has pointed out that ever since 1920 the Soviet Union has made considerable use of the Northeast Passage, which lies along the northern shores of Europe and Asia...
...Fittingly, the skipper of the St...
...It locked the St...
...Roch, came up Burrard Inlet and 8 red-coated Mounties went ashore...
...The Third Route Behind the St...
...A few weeks ago the first round-trip journey through the Northwest Passage was completed at the British Columbia seaport of Vancouver...
...Henry A. Larsen, who wears the 4 chevrons of a staff sergeant on his scarlet tunic, grew up a few miles from the birthplace of his hero, Amundsen...
...The tiny ship left Vancouver in 1940 and negotiated the Northwest Passage from Pacific to Atlantic in 28 months...
...For many years Dr...
...This was the most important exploration to take place since the war began...
...Roch...
...Many times huge icebergs and floes threatened to crush the boat like an eggshell...
...Roch in the ice pack during a pair of savage Arctic Winters...
...Roch north to deliver supplies to the far-flung Mounted Police outposts near the mouth of the Mackenzie River...
...They visited remote Eskimo tribes and took a census among these most far-flung of all the inhabitants of North America...
...For more than 300 years the prospect of navigating the Northwest Passage has fired the imagination of adventurous men...
...But always its timbers of Douglas fir and its sheathing of Australian "iron bark" held firm...
...Roch through the labyrinth of islands which lie northwest of Hudson Bay, where their historic predecessor whose name the Bay bears had met his death...
...Henry Hudson and his son perished in 1611 trying to find the fabulous route which linked the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans via the roof of North America...
...Such men as Stefansson and Philip Chester of the Hudson's Bay Company already have commenced to take part...
...One member of the crew, Constable Albert Joseph Chartrand, died of heart failure when the temperature dropped to 60 degrees below zero and stayed the^e for weeks at a time...
...The route through the Northwest Passage," says Sergeant Larsen, "is suitable for Summer traffic by wooden vessels and of course by steel vessels...
...For centuries the classic route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans was the perilous journey around the tip of Gape Horn...
...Amundsen's tales of the Polar regions inspired in him an ambition to explore the Northwest Passage...
...When the little schooner came up Vancouver harbor, dreadnaughts dipped their colors in salute...
...A little 105-foot schooner, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrol boat St...
...He crossed the Atlantic, became a naturalized Canadian, and joined the Royal Mounted...
...Men even continue to explore the few remote recesses of the earth where our dubious influence has yet to be felt...
...The data and information acquired by Larsen and his seafaring Mounties was a factor in the recent establishment at Montreal of the Arctic Institute of North America...
...Roch pried their schooner out of the pack during their second August in the Arctic...
...Having traversed the forbidding Northwest Passage from west to east, Sergeant Larsen sought permission to attempt the return journey...
...They will make studies of the Arctic regions of this hemisphere, with a view to development and possible settlement...
...Much commerce has been carried through the Northeast Passage between the mouths of Siberia's great rivers such as the Lena, Ob, and Yenisei...
...Sergeant Larsen and Constable P. G. Hunt mushed across the ice for 41 days studying the movement of the pack...
...60 Below Zero The first voyage lasted almost 2% years...
...It has many postwar possibilities...
...Yet books are written, babies are born, divorces are granted, houses are robbed, classes are taught, couples are married, and the aged and infirm are buried...
...Roch cruised along Alaska's fjords and entered British Columbia waters...
...At any other time, except at the height of a global conflict, it would have stirred the civilized world...
...Roch was nearly 4 years of voyaging in the ice-locked waters off the northern shores of the continent...
...seaway opened by the St...
...As a member of "G" Division, which patrols the north from Hudson Bay to the Alaskan border, Larsen sailed the St...
...In 1940, S. T. Wood, commissioner of the famous red-coated force and, incidentally, the great-grandson of President Zachary Taylor, gave Larsen his chance to poke into the Northwest Passage...
...Less than 3 months out of Halifax, the St...
...The weather was never warmer than 48 below...
...A New Seaway This argosy by 8 Mounted policemen may bring about a new era in the development of the Far North...
...This organization will include leading scientists,-explorers, and geographers of the United States and Canada...
...Vilhjalmur Stefansson has been agitating for the opening of the Northwest Passage...
...Roch was born in Norway, home of many great Arctic explorers...
...With blasting powder and ice chisels, the crew of the St...
...Perhaps in the future the furs, timber, minerals, and other products of the Mackenzie and Yukon Basins can be freighted through this new...
...Knowledge gained on the first trip enabled Larsen and his men to complete the return voyage in one-tentH the time, for they knew the soundings and the shifting movements of the ice pack...
Vol. 9 • April 1945 • No. 15
