Shipping Routes and the Melting Northwest Passage

Two principal sea lanes cross the top of the world: the Northwest Passage, threading through Canada's Arctic Archipelago between the Atlantic and Pacific, and the Northern Sea Route, running along Russia's Siberian coast from the Barents Sea to the Bering Strait. The Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen achieved the first complete navigation of the Northwest Passage between 1903 and 1906 aboard the small herring boat Gjøa, a voyage that took three years because his vessel had to winter twice in the ice; it was not until 1969 that the American icebreaking oil tanker SS Manhattan made the first transit by a large commercial vessel, a test crossing that industry ultimately judged impractical for regular oil shipment at the time.