The Evolution of Arctic Airways

Extract

When men of the first Elizabethan era looked to the Arctic, they dreamed of a North–West Passage over the sea to enable them to reach by a short cut the fabulous riches of the Far East. Between 1576 and 1578, Martin Frobisher doggedly took three expeditions beyond Greenland to explore what he thought was an open channel but which in reality is the bay of Baffin Land and today bears his name—as tribute to a great pioneer. Others to take unsuccessful expeditions North were Davis, Baffin and Hudson, and their names too have been immortalised in the geography of the Arctic. These men had to contend not only with the severity of the elements and with inadequate equipment in their frail sailing craft; mutiny at sea was prevalent in those days. Thus in the huge bay which now bears his name, Hudson with eight of his companions was put ashore by a mutinous crew and abandoned to his fate. Not until 1847 came Sir John Franklin's triumph in which he and his expedition perished after the moment of discovery, his two ships Erebus and Terror being crushed in the ice.