Was the Northeast Passage first navigated in 1660? ( reduced Arctic sea ice then??)

Whats up With That? ^ | February 13, 2012 | Anthony Watts

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

If true, it suggests periods of reduced Arctic sea ice during that time that made this feat possible.

Reposted from the blog Ecotretas with permission

A graphical comparison between the North East Passage (blue) and an alternative route through Suez Canal (red)

David Melgueiro, a Portuguese navigator, might have been the first to navigate the Northeast Passage (known now as Northern Sea Route), between 1660 and 1662, more than 200 years before Adolf Erik Nordenskjöld, who did it ​​in 1878. One of the most detailed accounts for this voyage is given by Eduardo Brazão in The Corte-Real family and the New World (French version here), 1965, in which he describes in pages 68 and 69:

Yet it is interesting to mention here the imaginary (so we believe) voyage of our Melgueiro, in which people believed for some time. On this topic we quote Duarte Leite (op. cit., vol. II, p. 261 et seq.):

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

From the comments:

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P. Solar says:

February 13, 2012 at 4:19 am

Very interesting article. Some solid research. I’ll look deeper into what you found in Briffa’s data.

One thing I note in the “Terrum” map is the apparently huge extent of Antarctica. Allowing for inaccuracies of these times etc it does still seem to have an extent almost twice of what it is currently.

The fact that the two polar regions tend to behave in opposing trends may support the idea of a much larger ice coverage in Antarctica and less in the North as is suggest by this article.

[blam]

Sounds reasonable.

[SunkenCiv]

GGG managers are SunkenCiv, StayAt HomeMother & Ernest_at_the_Beach	join list or digest view topics view or post blog bookmark post a topic subscribe
Thanks Ernest_at_the_Beach. Someone I've known for years online (iow, virtually) has told me that some of his ancestors were medieval Scandinavian seagoing merchants, and that there are references to voyages eastward in the Arctic Ocean led to a sort of NE passage, the length of Asia and out through the Bering Strait, and into trade with the eastern Asians on the Pacific coast. Interesting if true. To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list.

[JerseyanExile]

That would have been smack dab in the middle of the Little Ice Age - why would arctic sea ice be less of a problem during that period?

[Bigg Red]

Fascinating possibility....

[Ernest_at_the_Beach]

See #2.

[Beowulf9]

Once in High School they wanted us to do a book report on any book from the list they submitted.

I waited too long and finally went to the library at school, all the good books were out, so I took out the book, Northwest Passage. Prob was it was Friday, the report was due Monday and the book was like 700 pages long.

Got up to about 300 or so, sick to death of reading and reading and did the report saying ‘and they finally found the Northwest Passage’....

My first lesson on procrastination.