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Article: Northwest Passage
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
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NORTHWEST PASSAGE
NORTHWEST PASSAGE.
First navigated during a voyage from 1903 to 1906 by the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen in his ship, the
Gjoa,
the Northwest Passage is the sea route that links the North Atlantic Ocean with the North Pacific Ocean. It extends from Baffin Bay, which lies between West Greenland and Baffin Island, to the Bering Strait, which lies between Alaska and Siberia, through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Sixteenth-and seventeenth-century explorers hoped to find a shortcut around America to eastern Asia through a passage north of the American continent. However, the passage eluded discovery for centuries because of the intricate geography of the ...