VOYAGE THROUGH ARCTIC

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27463, 24 September 1954, Page 13

VOYAGE THROUGH ARCTIC

North-West Passage Navigated (Rec. It p.m.) : OTTAWA, Sept. 22. The Canadian Naval Arctic patrol ship Labrador had reached the Behring Strait to become the first warship ever to navigate the North-west Passage through the Canadian Arctic, naval headquarters announced today. The Labrador, a 6500-ton icebreaker, making its first cruise of Arctic waters, was reported today off Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska. It sailed from Halifax two months ago and met two United States icebreakers in Viscount Melville Sound, about 900 miles from the North Pole, in late August. The two United States ships, the Burton Island and the Northwind, entered the tortuous North-west Passage channels from the west. During August they twice navigated the icechoked McClure Strait, the directroute west entrance of the North-west Passage. The strait never had been traversed by a ship before, because of the unusually heavy ice. The three ships left Melville Sound via Prince of Wales Strait, a narrow southward route out of the passage channel used by most previous ships navigating across the top of the continent.

The Labrador sailed from Halifax on July. 23 for its first cruise in the Arctic. Besides being the first warship to complete the trip from one ocean to the other via the North-west Passage, the Labrador was the first major ship to make the trip. The Labrador, built for the Canadian Navy exclusively for ice-patrol work, is fitted with the latest devices for combating the effects of ice and extreme weather. The three ice-breakers carried out hydrographic and oceanographic surveys along the north coast of Canada and Alaska.

A group of Canadian and United States scientists are aboard the two United States ships. They conducted surveys in McClure Strait and Melville Sound throughout the summer.