The Northwest Passage, Sought by Europeans for 400 Years, Is Found and Traversed by Ship by Roald Amundsen
Overview
Europeans searched for 400 years for a passage through North America that would take them to the fabled lands of the Orient. Their searches met with little success. The first man to take a sailing ship from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean through this fabled passage was Roald Amundsen (1872-1928) of Norway in 1903-06. By then, Europeans had found other ways to get to China and southeast Asia, and entrepreneurs and traders were no longer interested in this passage. Nonetheless, Amundsen's voyage was a culmination of human effort as well as a signal of the new understanding of the lands at the northern end of the earth.
Background
The 1492 discovery by Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) of new land masses unknown to the Europeans created a problem that was not solved for over 400 years. Columbus refused to admit that he had not reached India, and he thought that China was just on the other side of the land he did find. Subsequent explorers tried to find a way through or around these two massive continents that lay between Europe and the Orient.
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