at Prudhoe Bay, about a 100 miles from Barrow, was brought up in the annual sealift using tugs and barges some all the way from SEA, others from ANC that go around the Alaska Peninsula, up through the Bering Sea, the Chukchi Sea and into the Arctic Ocean bringing housing modules, drilling rigs, all sorts of stuff. It’s usually in August. With modern ships and, especially navigation and satellite technology, you can get through most if not all the way through the “Northwest Passage” in almost any year.

The whalers were working the Arctic Coast well past Barrow by the mid-19th Century. The last “battle” of the Civil War was the CSS Shenandoah’s destruction of the Yankee whaling fleet off Kotzebue, Alaska well north of the Arctic Circle in June and early July of 1865. The big deterrent to a “Northwest Passage” back in the days of sailing ships was that the passage took so long that they couldn’t get through during the summer months. See, e.g., Franklin’s expedition where he came from east to west and finally ran out of weather and water off the NW Territories. What was impossible in a 7-10 knot sailing ship is quite practical in a properly equipped 20+ kt. diesel or diesel electric vessel, especially one built so that it can knock some ice out of the way.

history, might think that no one has ever sailed through the arctic; but, a little research will show that the Chinese traversed the Arctic ocean in the middle ages, and documented it. The climate in the 10th century was much warmer than today… that’s when Greenland was settled, and when meadows and forests were plentiful there. The warmth lasted until the “little ice age” a few hundred years later. You often hear “weather men” discuss this like they were the first to discover it; like teenagers who think they’re the first to discover sex. Thanks for your insight.