Mad maps and tragic journeys

It is astonishing to realise that as recently as the 1720s much of North America and Australasia was still terra incognita to Europeans. The west coast of America joined up with Hudson's Bay, and a "great southern continent" stretched across the lower globe. Anything seemed possible in these regions, especially the existence of a northwest passage linking the Pacific to the Atlantic. It even had a name, The Straits of Anian, long before anyone claimed to have set eyes on it, and a supposed position just north of the island of California. No wonder that the stories of 18th century exploration of the "passage" are essentially tragic. Armed with mad maps, travellers' tales and flimsy boats, generations of mariners and adventurers set out to find not a quick route through to trade and conquest, but a series of dead ends in pack ice.

Historian Glyn Williams has brought together these stories in a richly informative and extremely well-written book, detailing the major Arctic and Antarctic explorations of the 18th century.

The earlier attempts on a northwest passage were mostly from the east, through Hudson's Bay, well-known to traders for centuries and wellguarded by the powerful Hudson's Bay Company. But the exploration parties had none of the company's savvy about wintering in the far north and expended most of their energies on sheer survival, limping home after a season or two if they were lucky, vanishing without trace if they were not. Those that didn't die of pleurisy or scurvy had frostbite to contend with, or alcohol poisoning from "near-lethal allocations" of grog (though the fact that many of the drink supplies froze in their barrels may have saved a few lives). When Christopher Middleton and his crew holed up at a fort on the Churchill river in the 1740s, they had to resort to sealing themselves in with noxious wood-fires and using heated cannonballs as makeshift radiators. "We can hardly look abroad without freezing our Faces, Hands or Feet," the Captain wrote in his journal, "and then lying in for Cure brings on the Scurvy, and whoever takes to his Bed hardly ever gets abroad again."

The myth of a navigable northwest passage was bolstered by the obsessive interest of amateurs like the MP Arthur Dobbs, who from the comfort of his London home spent 20 years campaigning for funds and official backing. Dobbs was no seaman, but was deeply concerned with the political imperative of beating the French or Spanish to find a route through. His fervour was such that he simply didn't believe the mariners who returned unsuccessful and conducted a virulent pamphlet war and court case against Middleton

in his later years, accusing him of falsifying evidence for secret gain.

The place-names given to the icy wastelands tell their own story: Cape Foulweather, Cape Flattery, Disenchantment Bay, Repulse Bay.

Glyn Williams is extremely sensitive to the human cost of these momentous voyages and the wider sense in which people "delude themselves that the objects of their desires are easily attainable".

His narrative is gripping, the illustrations marvellous (especially the new maps drawn for this book by John Gilkes) and the scholarship impeccable.

Discovery of a passage was still expected right up to the 1770s when James Cook's three epic voyages began to quantify the extent of earlier errors. By the time George Vancouver made his painstaking surveys of the northwest Pacific coast in the 1790s, the objective was to prove the passage did not exist and establish reliable maps. The first traverse of the icy waters between the Arctic Ocean and Baffin Bay only took place in the 1940s and took months; in 2000 a Canadian team completed the same journey in a matter of weeks. Ironically, after all those centuries of thwarted endeavour, global warming may be opening a way up to the Pacific at last.