North-West Passage

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 413, 23 May 1947, Page 10

North-West Passage

F all the dreams of exploration envisaged by the mind of adventurous man, I suppose the quest for the NorthWest Passage must rank as one of the most exciting. Few projects have enticed voyagers for so many hundreds of years, or been pursued with such dogged persistence. As a subject for the BBC programme Travellers’ Tales, this prob‘lem of exploration was well chosen, and in the short time allotted, the many and varied attempts at finding this northern sea-way were concisely related, from the early days when Queen Elizabeth gave her blessing to Frobisher, to the latest voyage by a Canadian staff-sergeant. Frobisher, Davis, Baffin, Baring, Cook, Ross, Parry, Franklin--all failed. Franklin, who first explored along the icy northern coast of Canada in an Indian ‘canoe, was later to command two ships and 134 volunteer officers and men in an ill-fated expedition in which, after having found the passage they sought, every single member perished; no less than 39 relief parties seagched for them, at a total cast of more than a million pounds, but nothing remained save skeletons in the snow, a message in a tin, and Eskimo tales of the last tragic march when the ships had been aban-doned-a tale as stirring and hopeless as that of Scott in the South. In 1905 Captain Amundsen sailed completely round the northern coast of America, being the first to achieve the northwest passage. Staff-Sergeant Larsen, of Canada, who spoke on the programme, was the first to sail the passage both ways. The tale of incredible adventure, suffering, and achievement leaves the listener with the mental query, "In an air-minded age, of what use is the North-West Passage, anyway?" But the answer to that is for the practicalminded, and has no place in this imaginative chronicle of adventure.