Vic Smith wrote:
Ran across this after seeing an article in boattest about a guy with a
Nordhavn doing the trip Atlantic to Pacific.
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/...y/1620336.html

Weird when you consider the travails of Franklin and Amundsen.
If the passage gets going good it could affect Panama Canal revenues.

--Vic

While every one thinks of the Franklin expedition freezing to death
trapped in the Arctic Ice, transpolar trips are nothing new.

While archaeological records have not shown Norwegian Vikings reached
the Alaskan side of the northwest passage, it is known that they sailed
as far north and west as Ellesmere Island, Skraeling Island. This was
in the 10th and 11th century before the Little ice age that cause much
unrest in Europe.

One of the first trans Arctic trips was Larsen's trip in 1944, Larsen's
first transit took two seasons. The return trip was far more swift than
his first; the 28 months he took on his first trip was significantly
reduced, setting the mark for having traversed it in a single season

On July 1, 1957, the United States Coast Guard cutter Storis departed in
company with U.S. Coast Guard cutters Bramble (WLB-392) and SPAR
(WLB-403) to search for a deep draft channel through the Arctic Ocean
and to collect hydrographic information. Upon her return to Greenland
waters, the Storis became the first U.S.-registered vessel to
circumnavigate North America. Shortly after her return in late 1957, she
was reassigned to her new home port of Kodiak, Alaska.

If you read the history of Arctic exploration you will find the some
years everything is frozen and you can not get as ship into the region.
Now as it was 60 years ago and nearly 1000 years ago it may be possible
to transverse the Arctic by ship.

Global weather changes are cyclic, and the cycles have been occurring
long before puny man appeared on the face of the earth and will continue
long after he disappears. We are in one of the cycles,and long term
temperature information shows we should be more worried about the return
of the ice ages rather than global warming.

There is a lot of good information on the climate coming out of the
Archaeological exploration of human activity in the ice age settlements
in the English channel

There are many other sources of information on Arctic Exploration but
you can start here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Passage