Clippinger

=The Northwest Passage: Why the Fabled Route to Asia Couldn't Be Conquered=

My objective: for the class to have the ability to understand and explain the Northwest Passage and how it does not exist.
Before explorers began looking for the Northwest Passage (a quick route to Asia), they became interested after Marco Polo came back with treasures and goods from his travels there. Afterwards, tens of hundreds of expeditions were made, none successful in finding such a thing. The plan was to make their way through the Arctic Ocean, crossing waterways within the Canadian Archipelago. But in the end, many explorers were unsuccessful, died at sea, or were rescued when they were trapped and dying of starvation.

This happened to Robert McClure, who went looking for the NW Passage, and got stuck in the ice. He had travelled all the way through the Bering Strait, Made it to Banks and Victoria Island and the Prince of Wales Strait, and then, his ship got stuck in the ice. He felt that had he gone further, he would've reached the Barrow's Strait, and completed the journey of the NW Passage. After he and his crew were rescued (dying of starvation and scurvy. YO HO HO! Sorry. I feel compelled to make a point that's it's a pirate disease.), he was rewarded 10, 000 pounds for proving the existence of the Passage.

In 1905, the first successful transit occured. Roald Amundsen completed the transit in his 47 ton fishing, with a crew of six. It was late summer-- August 26th. However, event hough this was a wonderful victory, it was a one time thing. Remember how McClure and co. got stuck in ice? That's because it wasn't late August. That's right, the only time of year when the Northwest Passage was navigable back in the day, was late summer. The rest of the year, it was blocked by ice!

Today, everything is more navigable, thanks to Global Warming (although that's more bad than good...).

In conclusion, the NW Passage was not utilized because of ice blocking the route.

[|http://www.athropolis.com/map9.htm#map2] This is a website where I got a lot of my information from that you can visit to confirm.


 * Insert image and explain.