The Big Shortcut

It has been a dream since the earliest phases of North American history: find a passage through North America to link Europe to Asia by sea. The Panama Canal was a man-made shortcut, but it was more focused on trade to the west coast of the United States than anything else. The Suez Canal made trade with the Middle East and parts of Asia easier, but the prize-of-prizes, the Northwest Passage was pretty close to international trade’s equivalent of the Holy Grail.

“In 1776 Captain James Cook was dispatched by the Admiralty in Great Britain under orders driven by a 1745 act which, when extended in 1775, promised a £20,000 prize for whoever discovered the passage. Initially the Admiralty had wanted Charles Clerke to lead the expedition, with Cook (in retirement following his exploits in the Pacific) acting as a consultant. However Cook had researched Bering's expeditions, and the Admiralty ultimately placed their faith in the veteran explorer to lead with Clerke accompanying him.

“After journeying through the Pacific, in another west–east attempt, Cook began at Nootka Sound in April 1778, and headed north along the coastline, charting the lands and searching for the regions sailed by the Russians 40 years previously. The Admiralty's orders had commanded the expedition to ignore all inlets and rivers until they reached a latitude of 65°N. Cook, however, failed to make any progress in sighting a Northwestern Passage.

“Various officers on the expedition, including William Bligh, George Vancouver, and John Gore, thought the existence of a route was 'improbable'. Before reaching 65°N they found the coastline pushing them further south, but Gore convinced Cook to sail on into the Cook Inlet in the hope of finding the route. They continued to the limits of the Alaskan peninsula and the start of the 1,200 mi (1,900 km) chain of Aleutian Islands. Despite reaching 70°N they encountered nothing but icebergs…

“The first explorer to conquer the Northwest Passage was the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen. In a three year journey between 1903 and 1906, Amundsen explored the passage with a crew of no more than six. Amundsen, who had sailed just in time to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed the voyage in the converted 47-ton herring boat Gjøa [pictured above]… Amundsen set out from Oslo in June 1903 and was west of the Boothia Peninsula by late September. The Gjøa was put into a natural harbour on the south shore of King William Island; by October 3 she was iced in. There the expedition remained for nearly two years, with the expedition members learning from the local Inuit people and undertaking measurements to determine the location of the North Magnetic Pole. The harbour, known as Gjoa Haven, has become the only settlement on the island.” Wikipedia.

Dozens of other attempts were mounted, but almost all were doomed to failure. Only when nuclear submarines were able to dive beneath polar ice caps (as did the Nautilus in 1958) was a very difficult “undersea” passage found. Many mariners who tried that same journey on surface ships died for their efforts. In the 1940s, a fortified “ice schooner” sort of made the journey with exceptional difficulty, but a genuine trade route was truly impossible. Until the last decade. For those who doubt the existence of global warming, the frenetic activity of world powers jockeying for legal justification to control the Northwest Passage would seem to be the clearest and most incontrovertible evidence to the contrary: “In 2007, while many of us were busy arguing about whether or not climate change is real, a Russian mini-sub planted a titanium flag on the sea floor far beneath the floating ice lid, claiming the North Pole for the Motherland. Not surprisingly, that claim didn't go over well with the representatives of the United States, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland, all of whom also have strong territorial interests--and military presences--in the Arctic.” FastCompany.com, August 22^nd.

Indeed, nations have been planting flags on all sorts of tiny islands and outcroppings of land pushing up from the oceans. “Under the Law of the Sea Treaty [signed by most countries], even the smallest patch of land offshore can anchor territorial rights to huge swathes of surrounding ocean. Russian geologists and politicians now say that the Lomonosov Ridge, an undersea belt of rock bisecting the heart of the Arctic Ocean, is an official extension of their mainland. This, of course, ignores the fact that it lies beneath thousands of feet of water and also comes close to the continental rims of Canada and Greenland, as well. In July of this year, a Russian nuclear icebreaker mapped the sea bed in hopes of bolstering that bold assertion. If the United Nations approves the claim, then Russia stands to gain 380,000 square miles of what used to be considered international waters, along with exclusive rights to massive reserves of oil and gas on the shallow continental shelves.

“Ironically, the artificial global thaw that spawned this land grab was largely caused by the nations that are now hoping to cash in on it; the United States, for example, was the planet's largest emitter of greenhouse gases until China surpassed it recently. Stay tuned for more drama as some of the world's most powerful nations squabble over a high-stakes bonanza that will reshape the geography of the far north for thousands of years to come. Let's hope that this burgeoning ‘cold rush’ doesn't trigger any hot conflicts, as well.” FastCompany.com.

I’m Peter Dekom, and did you ever get this sinking feeling about global greed?