Manhattan (ship)
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Other ships with this name include the Manhattan (1843) which was the first United States ship to make an authorized visit to Tokyo and the SS Manhattan which was a 1930's ocean liner.
The oil tanker SS Manhattan was the first commercial ship to cross the Northwest Passage in 1969. For this voyage she had been refitted with an icebreaker bow. She was the biggest ever US merchant vessel as well as the biggest icebreaker in history.
Starting on the east coast, the Manhattan went mainly through waters claimed by Canada, up into the Baffin Sea and west then through the Viscount Melville Sound. Heavy ice blocked the way through M'Clure Strait, so a more southerly route through Prince of Wales Strait and south of Banks Island was used. One single token barrel of crude oil was loaded at Prudhoe Bay and then the ship went back.
Oil had been found at Prudhoe Bay in 1968. The reason for the journey was the idea that sea transport of oil by icebreaking supertankers would be cheaper than the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Valdez. A second attempt to cross the passage in winter proved impossible, and there were numerous environmental concerns with the project, so it was was cancelled and the Trans-Alaska pipeline built.
The voyage prompted discussions in Canada about that country's sovereignty in the Arctic. At one point during the voyage, Inuit hunters stopped the vessel and demanded that the vessel master ask permission to cross through Canadian territory, which he did, and they granted. The Canadian sovereignty debate generated by the Manhattan is being rekindled as global climate change melts multi-year sea ice, making further ship transits likely in the future.
[edit] References
- Bern Keating, Tomas Sennett, Through the Northwest Passage for Oil, National Geographic Magazine, Vol 137, no 3, March 1970.
- "On Thinning Ice," podcast by Michael Byers, Canada Research Chair in Global Politics and International Law at the University of British Columbia, September 2006
[edit] External links
- Report about the SS Manhattan
- Report about crossing the north west passage
- The Double-Acting Ship Article in the magazine of the American Bureau of Shipping, summer 2005, pages18-22, (PDF)
