page_title: Roald Amundsen
section_title: Northwest Passage
hierarchical_section_title: Roald Amundsen / Polar treks / Northwest Passage
caption_attribution_description: English: Roald Amundsen
context_page_description: Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions and a key figure of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration. He led the first expedition to traverse the Northwest Passage by sea, from 1903 to 1906, and the first expedition to the South Pole in 1911. He led the first expedition proven to have reached the North Pole in a dirigible in 1926. He disappeared while taking part in a rescue mission for the airship Italia in 1928.
context_section_description: In 1903, Amundsen led the first expedition to successfully traverse Canada's Northwest Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. He planned a small expedition of six men in a 45-ton fishing vessel, Gjøa, in order to have flexibility. His ship had relatively shallow draft. His technique was to use a small ship and hug the coast. Amundsen had the ship outfitted with a small 13 horsepower single-screw paraffin engine.
  They traveled via Baffin Bay, the Parry Channel and then south through Peel Sound, James Ross Strait, Simpson Strait and Rae Strait. They spent two winters at King William Island, in the harbor of what is today Gjoa Haven. During this time, Amundsen and the crew learned from the local Netsilik Inuit people about Arctic survival skills, which he found invaluable in his later expedition to the South Pole. For example, he learned to use sled dogs for transportation of goods and to wear animal skins in lieu of heavy, woolen parkas, which could not keep out the cold when wet.
  Leaving Gjoa Haven, he sailed west and passed Cambridge Bay, which had been reached from the west by Richard Collinson in 1852. Continuing to the south of Victoria Island, the ship cleared the Canadian Arctic Archipelago on 17 August 1905. It had to stop for the winter before going on to Nome on Alaska's Pacific coast. The nearest telegraph station was 500 miles (800 km) away in Eagle. Amundsen traveled there overland to wire a success message on 5 December, then returned to Nome in 1906. Later that year he was elected to the American Antiquarian Society.
  At this time, Amundsen learned of the dissolution of the union between Norway and Sweden, and that he had a new king. The explorer sent the new king, Haakon VII, news that his traversing the Northwest Passage "was a great achievement for Norway". He said he hoped to do more and signed it "Your loyal subject, Roald Amundsen." The crew returned to Oslo in November 1906, after almost three-and-a-half years abroad. Gjøa was returned to Norway in 1972. After a 45-day trip from San Francisco on a bulk carrier, she was placed on land outside the Fram Museum in Oslo, where she is now situated inside her own dedicated building at the museum.
caption: Roald Amundsen, around 1908.
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