Just Finished Reading: Voyages of Delusion – The Search for the Northwest Passage in the Age of Reason by Glyn Williams (FP: 2002)

It HAD to be there. If only they could find it. Discovery meant fame, wealth both personally and for the Company and its shareholders and, more importantly, it would allow the British navy to dominate the Pacific in the same way that it now dominated the Atlantic. So it HAD to be there. The Northwest Passage running between the two great oceans would allow whoever could both find and defend it to shave weeks or even months off the voyages between Europe, India and the Orient which would enhance profits, undercut the commercial and political enemies of the British Empire and make her power unassailable. The search had already begun in the Hudson Bay with tantalising possibilities emerging out of the mists and between the icepacks that few ships could penetrate without difficulty. Rumours abounded – that a Spanish ship had already completed the voyage years or even decades before, that polar waters were ice free all year, the salt water simply couldn’t freeze, that native Indians had travelled days inland and had seen the Pacific ocean and returned with tales of great lakes linked by great rivers stretching across the continent. If only they could find the entrance to this interlinked system.

Despite being aware of the potential profits the secretive Hudson Bay Company was reluctant to search for the Passage themselves. They knew enough about their local environs to suspect that the Passage did not actually exist and, at every opportunity, called its existence into question. But obsessed men in London had other ideas and pressed Parliament to fund a survey of Hudson Bay beyond the area already mapped by the Company. This was the first of many private ventures and, later, Royal Navy missions sent to find the Holy Grail of navigation. Years of hardship in freezing temperatures the likes of which could scarcely be imagined, shipwreck, starvation and the ever present and mysterious scurvy, failed to blunt the search. As newly drawn maps arrived back in London, Madrid and St Petersburg the possible location of the Passage narrowed and narrowed again. But with the weather set against them for most of the year the journeys into the far North on the eastern seaboard gave way to the possibility of gaining access to the Passage on the Pacific side. The Russians had already discovered the Bering Strait and the edge of Alaska which showed great promise. To discover more the great navigator of the age – Captain James Cook – was sent to investigate the west coast north of Spanish California. After many months of travel and many more months of exploration and coastal mapping a few tantalising hints were found but there was no sight of the fabled inlet spoken of in awe in old Spanish texts. It was left to Captain George Vancouver to undertake the tedious task of mapping every twist of the western coast and the exploration of every river or estuary heading inland. Time and again hope turned to disappointment as the towering mountain chain (later known as the Rocky Mountains) seemed to be impenetrable. With ever more detailed treks inland failing to uncover any great east-west navigable watercourses hope of the true Northwest Passage began to fade and finally the much talked about earlier voyages were seen as fantasy and hoax. 

This is a brilliantly told tale of one of the driving obsessions of the 17th and 18th centuries in the seafaring nations of Europe. With competing expeditions from Britain, France, Spain and Russia a great deal of effort, time and gold was spent trying to find something that did not exist. In the Age of Enlightenment this was a very strange phenomena indeed but the author shows just how this drive came about and what sustained it for so long despite so many setbacks. Not only a fascinating tale of geographical exploration but also an interesting insight into the European mind of the time. Definitely recommended for naval history buffs. (R)

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