Northwest Passage Expedition Voyage

Northwest Passage, Nunavut High Arctic · Canada

Moderate16 daysArctic~£11,500 est.

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Overview

For four centuries this route killed the people who attempted it. Now, in the brief August window when the ice relents, expedition ships thread the channels of the Canadian High Arctic that Franklin's men died trying to map. The emotional centre of the voyage is Beechey Island: three weathered wooden headboards on a gravel beach, graves of the first men lost from the 1845 expedition, fog rolling over the anchorage where Erebus and Terror wintered. Between the history, the Arctic performs. Zodiacs idle beneath the seabird cities of Prince Leopold Island, polar bears amble the Somerset Island shoreline, and if the ice allows a transit of narrow Bellot Strait you pass the northernmost tip of mainland America. In Gjoa Haven, where Amundsen overwintered and learned from Inuit the skills that later won him the Pole, community visits put living culture alongside the mythology. Voyages of 14 to 17 days run between Kangerlussuaq in Greenland and Kugluktuk or Cambridge Bay, bookended by charter flights. Berths start around £11,500 and the itinerary is written in pencil: the daily ice chart decides which channels you actually sail. Some years ships turn back — that uncertainty is the point.