Finding and Surviving the Northwest Passage on a Little Ship Named Gjøa (opens in new tab)

Global trade really opened up during the Age of Exploration, but it was an awfully long journey between oceans when you had to sail around the southern tips of Africa or South America and your trading partners were in the Northern Hemisphere. It would be a far shorter trip through the Arctic Ocean, but how? The fabled Northwest Passage was filled with icebergs and unmapped islands and the sea was frozen most of the year anyway. But intrepid explorers spent 300 years looking for that route, wi...