The Search for the Northwest Passage

Savours’s definition of the north‐west passage, “the sea route linking the North Atlantic Ocean with the North Pacific Ocean. It extends from Baffin Bay (between West Greenland and Baffin Island) to Bering Strait (between Alaska and Siberia) through the Canadian Arctic archipelago” is essentially in accord with that set down in the Charter Granted To The Company of The Merchants of the North‐West Passage, 26 July 1612:

Concerned only with the British search for the passage, and not that sought in more southerly latitudes by Portuguese and French navigators, with hardly a mention of the sixteenth‐century Spanish search for...