The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #129573 Message #4102208
Posted By: Ross Campbell
14-Apr-21 - 01:01 PM
Thread Name: Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew - 1845
Subject: RE: Concerning Franklin and His Gallant Crew - 1845
Re henryp's list of sucessful transits - there is one more. I remember an article and pictures from the time in National Geographic magazine.
"SS Manhattan was an oil tanker constructed at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, that became the first commercial ship to cross the Northwest Passage in 1969." (Wiki)
My friend Ron Baxter (Sailor Ron on Mudcat, not net-connected these days) saw the Manhattan on one of his trips to the USA. He reckons the state of the ship's plates was the reason that ideas of a second transit were abandoned, along with plans for commercial exploitation (for the time being) of the North West Passage.
I just finished binge-watching "Terror" on BBC iPlayer. Interesting novelisation of how things might have been.