Voyage to the Northwest Passage

Qeqertarsuaq is the largest town on Disko Island, the largest island in Greenland, on the west coast and part of Disko Bay, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The Lyngmark Glacier rises above the town and the area’s lush hills, basalt columns and black sand beaches reflect its volcanic origin. The area is very fertile and home to diverse species not found elsewhere in Greenland. Keep an eye out for its hot springs as we move through floating icebergs and whales.

Days at sea are the perfect chance to relax, unwind and do whatever takes your fancy. So whether that is going to the gym, visiting the spa, trying to spot a whale from the deck, reading a chapter or two, or simply topping up your tan, these blue sea days are the perfect balance to the green days spent exploring on land.

This area is most closely associated with the exploration of Canada’s High Arctic and the Northwest Passage. Much of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago was mapped while searching for the missing crew of British explorer Sir John Franklin’s fateful 1845-46 Northwest Passage Expedition. Radstock Bay sits below the mighty Caswall Tower mountain and hides many secrets, such as evidence of sledge tracks, camps and food tins that may help to reveal what happened. Nearby, Beechey Island Sites are five locations across desolate Beechey Island, now designated as important historic sites. These include the sites where Sir John Franklin and his crew wintered.

Crossing the Lancaster Sound to Somerset Island, you pass the most important bird sanctuary in the Canadian Arctic, the steep cliffs around flat-topped Prince Leopold Island are home to more than 500,000 nesting pairs of thick-billed murres, black guillemots, northern fulmars and black-legged kittiwakes. Beluga whales come to moult in the shallow gravel beds. Sailing south to Elwin Bay, a breathtaking fjord in Prince Regent Inlet, keep an eye out for polar bears hunting for ringed seals that haul out onto the sea ice. Nearby at Port Leopold on Somerset Island, English explorer James Clark Ross wintered while searching for the missing Franklin expedition in 1848.

Fort Ross on Somerset Island is the abandoned last trading post of the Hudson’s Bay Company. The timber building that remains, built in 1937, formed part of the most northerly established fur trading post covering the Bellot Strait, before being abandoned due to severe ice-choked conditions at sea. One of the straits along the Northwest passage, the narrow 16-mile long Bellot Strait with steep cliffs, is windy with strong tidal currents. Connecting Brentford Bay to icy Peel Sound, the strait separates Somerset Island in the north from the Murchison Promontory on Boothia Peninsula to the south, where Point Zenith, the northernmost continental point of the Americas is positioned. It was also here on the 1829 Second Arctic expedition of Sir John Ross, that his nephew Sir James Clark Ross located the Magnetic North Pole.

Choked up by ice in winter, Peel Sound is a 125-mile long channel separating Prince of Wales Island to the west and Somerset Island to the east. The icebound arctic waters prevented several 19th-century explorers from achieving their goals – Sir John Franklin in 1846, Francis Leopold McClintock in 1858 and Allen Young in 1875. Take time to learn more about these early adventurers as you relax and spot polar bears on the pack ice.

An important high arctic wildlife area and part of Sirmilik National Park, today you cruise the 70-mile long Navy Board Inlet between Bylot Island to the east and the Borden Peninsula south of Lancaster Sound. This was a traditional hunting area for Inuit – watch out for narwhals, bowhead whales, beluga, orca, harp and ringed seals. As you sail through these narrow, iceberg-filled waters, spot caribou and polar bears who roam the shores and on tiny islands, such as Wollaston Islands at the entrance to Lancaster Sound.

At the head of one of the longest fjords in western Greenland, Kangerlussuaq has a history as a World War II airbase. Visit the 60-metre tall face of the Russell Glacier on the edge of the Greenland ice cap to hear and see it crack and break off into the meltwater. Other popular activities include kayaking on the fjords and wildlife tours of the glacial areas that attract muskoxen, reindeer, arctic foxes and gyrfalcons.