Book Review: The ‘elusive’ Northwest Passage is revisited in this comprehensive history of interocean navigation efforts

“Discovering Nothing: In Search of the Elusive Northwest Passage”

By David L. Nicandri; UBC Press, 2024; 328 pages; $37.95.

The search for a northern sea passage between the Atlantic and Pacific is legendary. Numerous expeditions from both sides of the continent ended in failure, some in disastrous situations where the ships became stuck in the ice. David Nicandri, a respected historian from Washington State and author of several books, including Captain Cook Rediscovered, has now undertaken a comprehensive investigation of the explorers and schemers who sought or promoted a connection between the oceans, as well as the global competition that influenced the search.

Nicandri also shows how the search led to further explorations of the continent, including those of Lewis and Clark. He expands the meaning of a Northwest Passage from a sea passage across the top of the continent to theories of an inland sea (“Mediterranean”) that would mirror Hudson Bay to the east, a network of lakes and rivers that would cross the continent with easy portages, and eventually transcontinental railroads. For a long time, no one realized how big North America was and how massive its mountain ranges were. What the author calls the “geography of hope” took hold.

Discovering Nothing is organized thematically rather than chronologically, which can be confusing and repetitive at times, but the author has carefully included a list of characters, a chronology, maps, and endnotes to help readers navigate. Nicandri draws on extensive research into four major expeditions—those of James Cook, Alexander Mackenzie, George Vancouver, and Lewis and Clark—and surrounds them with the personalities and geopolitics of others who played important roles related to the search for scientific knowledge and the control of territory and resources. Although there is very little evidence of contact with indigenous peoples, the author makes it clear that there was actually nothing to “discover” in places where people already lived, traveled, and traded.

In 1778, on Cook’s third (and final) voyage, Cook roughly mapped the west coast of North America and sailed through the Bering Strait to Icy Cape on the Chukchi Sea, where thick ice stopped him. He was tasked with finding a northwest passage if there was one. Along the way, he looked for openings that might lead inland. The one that became known as Cook’s River seemed promising, but was shallow (hence our Turnagain Arm). It was Vancouver who, in 1794, dispelled the notion that Cook’s River flowed inland to connect to lakes and other rivers that might form a passage east; he confirmed that the waterway was a bay with some glacier-fed arms.

Meanwhile, Russian, Spanish and French explorers were on similar adventures, leaving their names on islands, capes and bays in search of fame and fortune. One delight for Alaskans is that this book gives them a greater understanding of the connections between history and our named geography. Kotzebue and Malaspina, Valdes, Bligh, Portlock and Dixon, Gore, Delong and many lesser-known figures are all mentioned here in connection with their travels along the Alaskan coast.

Once it became widely clear that there was no Northwest Passage (despite the persistent wishful thinking of many), the interests of the Western world shifted elsewhere. A second wave of Arctic enthusiasm, less one of discovery than of romance, followed in the 19th century and included the ill-fated Franklin Expedition and the 50 rescue missions searching for survivors. No ship made it through the ice until Norwegian Roald Amundsen completed the crossing in 1905 after his ship had been trapped in the ice for two winters.

An epilogue, “The New North,” brings the whole question of a Northwest Passage and its “inaccessibility” up to date with enormous relevance. Here Nicandri discusses the retreat of Arctic ice in recent decades and the increase in commercial shipping across both the northern tip of North America and the northern tip of Russia (the so-called Northern Sea Route). He points out that Russia has 36 large icebreakers that escort more than 1,000 ships annually along its northern coast, and that China (which has declared itself a “near-Arctic state” for political reasons) is building its own fleet. (The United States has two operational icebreakers, only one of which visits the Arctic.) Moreover, the vast open sea makes oil, gas, and minerals newly available for exploitation, and no international agreements adequately regulate claims to the seabed.

“In terms of practical adaptation to these circumstances,” writes Nicandri, “it seems as if the clock has been turned back to the last third of the 18th century and the era of James Cook … who was weighing the prospects of shortening shipping distances between Europe and Asia.” The “travel window” for the crossing is now eight months, and ships are carrying natural gas between Russia and China, saving 5,000 miles and two weeks of time.

Curiously, the book mentions for only three sentences in an earlier chapter the 1969 voyage of the oil supertanker Manhattan, which managed to reach Prudhoe Bay in Alaska to test the viability of transporting oil by sea. (The Trans-Alaska Pipeline was built instead.)

Anyone interested in the history of the North or of exploration will find in Discovering Nothing a careful critique and partial reinterpretation of a significant part of the history of Alaska, America, and the world.