Book: The North West Passage

Overview
Roald Amundsen’s The North West Passage (1908) is the first-person record of his 1903–1906 voyage in the small sloop Gjøa, the expedition that achieved the first complete navigation of the Northwest Passage. Blending travel narrative, scientific report, and ethnographic observation, Amundsen recounts how a six-man crew, modest equipment, and an adaptive strategy overcame dangers that had thwarted larger, better-funded expeditions for decades. The book is as concerned with methods, how to survive, survey, and cooperate in the Arctic, as with milestones.

Purpose and Plan
Amundsen frames the voyage around two ambitions: to find a navigable route through the Canadian Arctic Archipelago and to conduct a sustained program of geomagnetic observations near the wandering North Magnetic Pole. He argues that the best chance of success lies not in ramming heavy ships through ice, but in using a small, maneuverable vessel, living off local resources, and adopting Indigenous techniques. Gjøa is outfitted with sails and a modest engine, sled dogs, and a suite of magnetometers and meteorological instruments. The crew is selected for versatility, sailors who can hunt, fix engines, handle dogs, and take observations.

Into the Archipelago
After provisioning in Greenland and crossing Baffin Bay, Gjøa threads into the labyrinth of channels and shoals. Amundsen writes candidly about the anxiety of shallow soundings, uncharted bars, and shifting ice. Where predecessors often forced progress and paid dearly, he heaves to, reconnoiters with boat and lead, and advances in short, careful jumps. The prudence costs time but saves the ship.

Gjøa Haven and the Magnetic Program
The heart of the narrative is two winters anchored in a snug natural harbor on the south coast of King William Island, later called Gjøa Haven. Here Amundsen builds a shore station and begins the long series of magnetic measurements, declination, inclination, and intensity, taken around the clock across seasons. He treats the work with the same earnestness as the sailing, detailing instruments, procedures, and the need for unbroken series to isolate diurnal and secular variation. Sledge journeys radiate from the base to extend the survey and to map poorly known coasts.

Learning from the Netsilik
Sustenance and mobility depend on the Netsilik Inuit communities who visit the harbor. Amundsen describes trading, shared hunts, clothing patterns, igloo construction, dog care, and the etiquette of hospitality. He credits their skill with keeping his party healthy and mobile, noting that caribou-skin clothing, seal-meat diets, and low, wind-shedding shelters outperform European kit. The book’s most humane passages dwell on mutual curiosity and the steady replacement of preconceived notions with practical respect.

Through the Shallows to the Beaufort Sea
When the ice relents, Gjøa slips westward along the low, island-choked south coast, through narrow, tortuous straits where unmarked shoals make every cable’s length a decision. Soundings are continuous; progress is measured in miles, not degrees. By late summer 1905 the little ship emerges into the Beaufort Sea, the geographical crux behind them. Freeze-up comes too quickly for an ocean run, and they spend another winter among whalers near the Mackenzie Delta, where Amundsen overlands to the Alaska telegraph line to cable news of the passage.

Final Leg and Reflections
With the 1906 thaw, Gjøa rounds Alaska to the Pacific, closing the circuit from the Atlantic. Amundsen closes the book by weighing means against ends. The passage, he argues, was won not by brute force but by economy: a small hull, open eyes, patience, and a willingness to learn. He honors earlier explorers, Franklin, Rae, McClure, while suggesting that success in the Arctic belongs to those who align their ambitions with the environment’s terms. The narrative stands as both a classic of polar exploration and a manifesto for scientific, cooperative, and adaptive travel in extreme places.