Across the Top of the World: The Quest for the Northwest Passage ebook

Bought this book to learn about the Artic before going there on a cruise. It was recommended reading and I can see why. Great information and a good coffee table volume. I ordered a used book and I am not sure it was ever opened. It was in almost perfect condition (I'd say perfect but it was classified as a used book in good condition so who am I to judge otherwise). I am a very happy owner of this book. Anyone thinking of a trip to the Artic would do well to read this one.

During my lifetime, mans endeavors at pushing back the boundaries of the unknown were attacking the sound barrier, and going into space ... culminating in landing on the moon, and equally important, the return to our diverse blue planet alive. Then ... there were the manned descents to the deepest known ocean floor .. "Challenger Deep" in "Trieste" and "Deep Challenger" for a bold push to expand our knowledge under the sea.

But, there was a time, a time spanning centuries when the curiosity of the vast unknown was not as lofty as space, nor as deep as 35,700' below the surface of the ocean. It was a shorter nautical path west ... to the Pacific, and the trade opportunities in the far east. The problem ... the newly discovered and vastly uncharted continents of the north, central and south Americas were blocking the way. There had to be a path toward the north. A pathway involving direct penetrations off the map into the dangerous uncharted cold icy unknown.

James P. Delgado does a magnificent job, with excellent utilization of maps, charts, photos, paintings and drawings to lay out the historical journey of conquest; man seeking a sea passage across the often bitterly frozen and deadly north. A very good read! Great nautical history.

I found this book a very interesting read. The photos were wonderful. It covers the varied expeditions on the quest for the Northwest Passage. Lots of people lost their lives and ultimately it was not, of course, a really usable shipping route.
The Franklin expedition and the various search parties is well covered. The one existing daguerotype of Franklin, which I had not seen, is included, as are the recent discoveries and theories about what happened.
At a bargain price, this is a nice gift book. Mine came without the tell tale black "bargain stripe" on the spine.

After having successfully transited the Northwest Passage in 2009 ("The Other Side of The Ice") I bought this book to gain even more knowledge on what has to be the most amazing area of the world. Brilliant in every way. I highly recommend it!
Sprague Theobald
The Other Side of the Ice: One Family's Treacherous Journey Negotiating the Northwest Passage
The Other Side of the Ice

This is a well-illustrated and well-written account of past explorers' struggles to find a northern passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans, through the Canadian Artic archipelago. I wish I had read this book before going on an expedition cruise through the passage. I would have been so much better prepared to appreciate the early explorers' experiences and achievements. Well done Jim Delgado!

Outstanding overview of early effort to find the Northwest Passage. The photos alone makes one realize how tough these early explorers were!

An easy read on the history of the North-West Passage.

Capt. James Cook was sailing north to seek a Northwest Passage between Europe and Asia when he ran across Niihau and Kauai in January 1778. He then pushed into the Chukchi Sea and became the first explorer to enter the western end of the passage, though he did not know it.

Retreating from the following winter, he ended up getting killed in Hawaii.

Considering the activity of Europeans in the Pacific in the late 18th century, somebody was bound to reach Hawaii. But that it should have happened just then, and with just those people, must have affected the development of Hawaiian relations with the outside world.

It may be that the reconnection of Hawaii to the rest of the world was the most portentous result of the three centuries of deadly, cruel searching for the Northwest Passage.

As far back as 1632, Capt. Thomas James, hired by Bristol merchants to seek a passage, announced, "There are certainly no commercial benefits to be obtained in any of the places I visited during this voyage." He had proved that a passage, if any existed, would lie above 80 degrees N., choked with ice and unusable.

Stubborn adventurers, mostly English, kept trying anyway, and James Delgado tells their stories in "Across the Top of the World" with up-to-date archaeological discoveries and a fairly recent respect for Inuit testimony.

Delgado is head of the Vancouver Maritime Museum, where St. Roch, the first ship to make the passage in both directions, resides.

That happened during World War II, when Canada was concerned to establish its claims to the islands of the Arctic Archipelago, through which there are several "Northwest Passages," all difficult.

Arctic archaeology has boomed in the past two decades, and although explorers started carefully recording Inuit accounts as far back as the 1860s, only in the past few years have these received independent corroboration from the archaeology.

Inuit oral accounts go back, with considerable but not perfect accuracy, at least to Martin Frobisher's attempt in the 1570s.

Almost all the attempts except Cook's started in eastern Canada.

The biggest, most disastrous was Sir John Franklin's. Like many another, it ended in starvation and cannibalism. Every one of his 129 men died.

Franklin, who died in 1847, led the biggest, best supplied and most modern exploration up to that time. While scurvy and starvation were the main killers of premodern explorers (with battles with natives a distant second), Franklin had ships full of canned provisions.

Archaeologists, testing frozen bones and hair, suspect that the lead in the solder on the cans slowly deranged the Franklin group, making them incapable of making sensible decisions. Nevertheless, some of them made heroic efforts to carry large boats across miles and miles of tundra to reach open water.

Searching for Franklin became an international mania, and the last links of the passage were discovered by these adventurers.

Roald Amundsen eventually sailed through the passage, but the first commercial attempt came only in 1969, when the tanker Manhattan was sent through to see if Alaskan North Slope crude oil could be shipped out. Even though the alternative (the Alyeska pipeline) cost $10 billion, that was a better deal than using the fabled Northwest Passage.

The irony is that today cruise ships carry tourists far into the Northwest Passage, in comfort and safety.

Delgado tells these stirring tales in matter-of-fact fashion.

Most accounts of Arctic explorations tell of the mysterious fascination that keeps drawing men back even though they nearly died the first, second or third time. Nothing of this grandeur and mysticism finds its way into "Across the Top of the World."

What it does have is hundreds of excellent illustrations, both engravings from old accounts and color photographs of old maps and all sorts of archaeological discoveries.