For centuries, European explorers, beginning with Christopher Columbus in 1492, sought a navigable passage as a possible trade route to Asia, but were blocked by North, Central, and South America; by ice, or by rough waters (e.g. Tierra del Fuego).

The Northwest Passage has three sections: Many attempts were made to find a salt water exit west from Hudson Bay, but the Fury and Hecla Strait in the far north is blocked by ice.

From east to west, the direction of most early exploration attempts, expeditions entered the passage from the Atlantic Ocean via the Davis Strait and through Baffin Bay, both of which are in Canada.

The strait probably took its name from Ania, a Chinese province mentioned in a 1559 edition of Marco Polo's book; it first appears on a map issued by Italian cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi about 1562.

The strait grew in European imagination as an easy sea lane linking Europe with the residence of Khagan (the Great Khan) in Cathay (northern China).

As part of another expedition, in July 1583 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who had written a treatise on the discovery of the passage and was a backer of Frobisher, claimed the territory of Newfoundland for the English crown.

René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the sailing ship, Le Griffon, in his quest to find the Northwest Passage via the upper Great Lakes.

In 1845, a lavishly equipped two-ship expedition led by Sir John Franklin sailed to the Canadian Arctic to chart the last unknown swaths of the Northwest Passage.

Many artifacts from the expedition were found over the next century and a half, including notes that the ships were ice-locked in 1846 near King William Island, about halfway through the passage, and unable to break free.

[51] Evidence from 1996, that confirms reports first made by John Rae in 1854 based on Inuit accounts, suggests that the last of the crew may have resorted to cannibalism of deceased members in an effort to survive.

Amundsen, who had sailed to escape creditors seeking to stop the expedition, completed the voyage in the converted 45 net register tonnage (4,500 cu ft or 130 m3) herring boat Gjøa.

Amundsen intended to hug the shore, live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and had determined that he needed to have a tiny crew to make this work.

He reached the Bering Strait in September and after a stopover in Victoria, British Columbia, went on to round Cape Horn and sail back to Belgium, thus being the first sailor to circumnavigate the Americas entirely by ship.

[67] In July 1986, David Scott Cowper set out from England in a 12.8-metre (42 ft) lifeboat named Mabel El Holland, and survived three Arctic winters in the Northwest Passage before reaching the Bering Strait in August 1989.

[68] On July 1, 2000, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police patrol vessel Nadon, having assumed the name St Roch II, departed Vancouver on a "Voyage of Rediscovery."

On September 1, 2001, Northabout, an 14.3-metre (47 ft) aluminium sailboat with diesel engine,[69] built and captained by Jarlath Cunnane, completed the Northwest Passage east-to-west from Ireland to the Bering Strait.

"[citation needed] On July 18, 2003, a father-and-son team, Richard and Andrew Wood, with Zoe Birchenough, sailed the yacht Norwegian Blue into the Bering Strait.

[70] In 2006, a scheduled cruise liner (MS Bremen) successfully ran the Northwest Passage,[71] helped by satellite images telling the location of sea ice.

Following a journey of more than 7,200 km (4,474 mi), Roubinet reached Greenland on September 9, 2007, thereby completing the first Northwest Passage voyage made in one season without engine.

Self-financed, Forsyth, a retired engineer from the Brookhaven National Laboratory, and winner of the Cruising Club of America's Blue Water Medal, sailed the Canadian Archipelago with sailor Joey Waits, airline captain Russ Roberts and carpenter David Wilson.

[81][82] On September 9, 2010, Bear Grylls and a team of five completed a point-to-point navigation between Pond Inlet and Tuktoyaktuk in the Northwest Territories on a rigid inflatable boat (RIB).

[87] Belzebub II departed Newfoundland following the coast of Greenland to Qaanaaq before tracking the sea ice to Grise Fiord, Canada's most northern community.

[91] At 18:45 GMT on September 18, 2012, Best Explorer, a steel cutter 15.17 metres (49.8 ft), skipper Nanni Acquarone, passing between the two Diomedes, was the first Italian sailboat to complete the Northwest Passage along the classical Amundsen route.

Twenty-two Italian amateur sailors took part of the trip, in eight legs from Tromsø, Norway, to King Cove, Alaska, totalling 8,200 nautical miles (15,200 km; 9,400 mi).

[92] Setting sail from Nome, Alaska, on August 18, 2012, and reaching Nuuk, Greenland, on September 12, 2012, The World became the largest passenger vessel to transit the Northwest Passage.

[103] From July to October 2023, the Arctic Cowboys,[104] became the first people to kayak the central portion of the Northwest Passage from Pond Inlet to Cape Bathurst, marking them as the first to navigate the Canadian Archipelago completely self-propelled, meaning no motors or sails were used.

[26] If the passage's deep waters become completely ice-free in summer months, they will be particularly enticing for supertankers that are too big to pass through the Panama Canal and must otherwise navigate around the tip of South America.

In his first news conference after the 2006 federal election, Prime Minister-designate Stephen Harper contested an earlier statement made by the U.S. ambassador that Arctic waters were international, stating the Canadian government's intention to enforce its sovereignty there.

[121] Scientists at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union on December 13, 2007, revealed that NASA satellites observing the western Arctic[clarification needed] showed a 16% decrease in cloud coverage during the summer of 2007 compared to 2006.

This would have the effect of allowing more sunlight to penetrate Earth's atmosphere and warm the Arctic Ocean waters, thus melting sea ice and contributing to opening the Northwest Passage.