NORTHWEST PASSAGE — ROBINSON 221 



conditions by the many expeditions, enthusiasm for the Northwest 

 Passage declined among explorers. In the meantime, commerce now 

 knew safer and more dependable routes to carry the world's merchan- 

 dise, and no longer encouraged interest in the Passage. 



The Northwest Passage, which had brought so many ships to de- 

 struction in the ice during three long and arduous centuries of polar 

 exploration, remained unconquered by any one vessel until the be- 

 ginning of the present century. In 1903, Roald Amundsen, Norwegian 

 Arctic adventurer, entered Lancaster Sound in a small 47-ton vessel, 

 the Gjoa, and took a route southward into uncharted Peel Sound, be- 

 tween Somerset and Prince of Wales Islands. He navigated as far as 

 southeastern King William Island, where his party spent two winters 

 at Gjoa Haven (Petersen Bay), studying terrestrial magnetism near 

 the North Magnetic Pole on western Boothia Peninsula. In leaving 

 the Arctic, Amundsen sailed westward through Queen Maud and Coro- 

 nation Gulfs but was caught in the ice near Herschel Island, where 

 he passed his third winter in 1906. Next summer he and his crew con- 

 tinued westward, becoming the first persons to navigate the Northwest 

 Passage successfully from east to west in a single ship. 



Within the modern period the Hudson's Bay Co. has experimented 

 with the use of the northern route to bring supplies to its far-flung 

 northern trading posts. In 1928 the H. B. C. schooner Fort James, 

 drawing 9 feet of water, entered the western Arctic from the east 

 through Lancaster Sound and Peel Strait and brought supplies to the 

 Gjoa Haven trading post on King William Island. After spending 

 two winters there the Fort James returned to the eastern Arctic via 

 the same route. This was the first commercial use of part of the pas- 

 sage, but when the Fort James was sent to the western Arctic in 1934, 

 she traveled via the Panama Canal. 



In 1937 the Hudson's Bay Co. icebreaker Nascopie, carrying the 

 Canadian Government Eastern Arctic Patrol, opened the trading post 

 of Fort Ross at the eastern end of Bellot Strait, and here met and 

 exchanged freight with the small H. B. C. schooner Aklavik, which 

 came up from King William Island. Thus Bellot Strait, which had 

 five times defied Captain M'Clintock and his Fox in 1858-59, became 

 the meeting place between the eastern and western Arctic on the 

 Northwest Passage. Shallow seas along the western section of this 

 route, however, limited the size of boats to small schooners like the 

 Aklavik, causing the route to be of little economic value, and the 

 scheme was dropped in 1940. 



The ship which was to make history in the Northwest Passage, the 

 R. C. M. P. schooner St. Roch, was built in 1928 and entered the western 

 Arctic around the Alaskan coast. In the following years the 80-ton 

 two-masted vessel traveled along the western Arctic coasts and islands 



67C212— 46 15 



