Download ´ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Ä Glyn Williams Glyn Williams Ä 2 Download Characters Arctic Labyrinth Ells than just the stories surrounding the Northwest Passage it is a look at how history is formed the hoaxes and lies as well as the heroes and bravery Nothing escapes the scrutiny of Glyn Williams in his attempt to understand why the Northwest Passage caught the imagination of generations of explorers and continues to do so toda. written by a scientist or so it seemed A little too dry for my adventurous mind

Download ´ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Ä Glyn Williams

Download ´ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Ä Glyn Williams Glyn Williams Ä 2 Download Characters Arctic Labyrinth Riving to be the first to finally realize a sustainable and practical Northwest Passage The history of the passage is rich with adventure courage and endurance against overwhelming odds cannibalism national pride and the growing evidence of the tyrannical behaviour of some of the navy's leading Arctic commanders Arctic Labyrinth t. The history of European penetration into the Pacific Ocean has long been Professor Glyn Williams special interest He has written extensively based on his historical research about European exploration trade and sometimes conflict in that ocean A fabled Strait of Anian across North America had been rumoured since the sixteenth century In Voyages of Delusion he has written a detailed and fascinating account of two centuries of exploration attempting to rediscover and verify a navigable passage from the North Atlantic into the Pacific a route that held out the promise of easier access to the profitable European trade with China and the Orient Early attempts to find a short route to the Pacific were largely British with hopes that some navigable waterway would be found out of or near Hudson Bay where the somewhat secretive Hudson s Bay Company had trading posts When these attempts failed the search shifted to the Pacific coast of North America where expeditions under Captain James Cook La P rouse and several Spanish explorers tried to locate the trans continental waterways supposed to have been discovered earlier by Juan de Fuca Bartholomew de Fonte and Maldonado Armchair geographers and cartographers in Europe had meanwhile constructed vast maps of North America in which imaginary inland seas and waterways apparently linked the Atlantic and Pacific coasts in total ignorance of the barrier of the Rocky Mountains and huge distances These abortive and often misreported voyages of exploration are described and put into context in this well written account by Glyn Williams By the late eighteenth century Vancouver Malaspina and other Spanish explorers had carried out very careful surveys of the Pacific coast under difficult conditions The commercial traders who came in search of the valuable sea otter pelts also contributed their findings These finally showed that all the earlier claims of navigable passages were delusions based on failure to appreciate the extent of the Inside Passage between the mainland and the extensive archipelago of islands off the fractured Pacific coastThis book covers the explorations up to the end of the eighteenth century and does not deal with the later attempts by others including the tragic voyages of Sir John Franklin in the nineteenth century The book is a compelling read but not one to read uickly it is very detailed and at times one struggles a bit with the innumerable characters For example Puget after whom Seattle s waterway is named is casually referred to as Lieutenant Peter Puget without mentioning which of Captain George Vancouver s two ships he served in The book has many invaluable maps and charts though the reproduction of some eighteenth century maps in the paperback edition is a bit disappointing The index is excellent and there are over 20 pages of scholarly endnotes as well as summaries of the somewhat incredible accounts of late sixteenth century discoveries It was not until 1914 that the Panama Canal provided a navigable Strait of Anian connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans through America Now rising ocean temperatures and retreat of polar ice caused by progressive climate change offers the possibility of a navigable North West Passage across the north of America

Download ´ PDF, DOC, TXT, eBook or Kindle ePUB free Ä Glyn Williams Glyn Williams Ä 2 Download Characters Arctic Labyrinth As a result of global warming and the subseuent shrinking of Arctic ice for the first time in seafaring history a navigable Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans will open up The possibility of seasonal shipping lanes has renewed the world's interest and there are lessons to be learned for the next explorers st. Non Fiction A history of the search for the Northwest Passage from the 1500s through to the 1940s mostly through the eyes of the British The Russians Spanish and French get a few mentions but always framed as competition After the passage lost favor with the British in the late 1800s it took them nearly four hundred years to realize that sailing through the dangerous ice choked waters of the arctic wasn t ever going to be practical the field opens up to include Swedish Norwegian and Canadian attemptsComprehensive in its British scope but written in dry unengaging prose this was a slog for me to get through Williams has moments of brilliantly cutting British humor but the majority of the book is taken up by unembellished dates and facts especially the earlier chapters where little is known about the voyages or the captains motivations I once found myself wailing But why would Thomas James try to scuttle his ship two separate times Only to get no answer That s just the way it goes Williams doesn t spend much time speculating and when he does it s all clearly identified as suppositionWilliams does a fair job introducing the many many people involved with the search for the Northwest Passage as well as reintroducing them when they pop up again later as many of them do It seems once you became an Arctic it was for life and those that survived their expeditions became advisers to the Admiralty and the next generation of explorersThe book has several maps but needed with detail Often a place would be mentioned that didn t appear on any of the maps in the book The twenty eight color plates are referenced in the text though once incorrectly and once not at all and I was amazed at some of the sketches and paintings made by the officers and crew aboard these expeditions And I don t know if this is a British thing or an academic style thing or what but Williams doesn t put HMS in front of naval ships which is confusing because sometimes that s the only way to tell if an expedition was sent by the Royal Navy or privately fundedThree stars A history mostly free of authorial opinion and theorizing ploddingly laid out in chronological order It doesn t have much personality but it has all the names dates and numbers you could need It also has an index and thorough end notes though no separate bibliography