SS Manhattan (1962)

Manhattan's route began in August 1969 on the east coast of North America and transited the passage from east to west via the Baffin Sea and Viscount Melville Sound. The master of Manhattan was Captain Roger A. Steward. Heavy sea 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. A single, token barrel of crude oil was loaded at Prudhoe Bay and then the ship went back. She was escorted by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS John A. Macdonald. At various times during the expedition, Manhattan was supported by the icebreakers CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, USCGC Staten Island, and USCGC Northwind.

This route through the Northwest Passage was quite controversial in international relations as sovereignty of these waters is claimed by Canada and this claim has been disputed by the United States. The Government of Canada has defined all waters in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as being "Canadian Internal Waters."

The voyage prompted passionate discussions in Canada about that country's sovereignty in the Arctic, a topic that dominated Arctic policy formulated under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's administration throughout the 1970s. 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 Manhattan is being rekindled as multi-year decreases in sea ice, due to global warming, make further ship transits likely in the future. The question is whether the passage can be considered an international strait or not.

The official reason for the voyage revolved around oil that had been discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968. Oil companies reasoned 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 cancelled and the Trans-Alaska pipeline built.[2]

The conversion of Manhattan was a co-operation between Esso and Wärtsilä, a Finnish shipbuilding company. Wärtsilä Icebreaking Model Basin (WIMB), the 50-metre (160 ft) ice tank built inside a converted air raid shelter in Helsinki, Finland, solely for this project, was later used for the company's own purposes until a new facility was built in the 1980s. Aker Arctic Technology Inc, a Finnish engineering company that specializes in the design of icebreakers and operates an ice model test facility, thus owes its existence to the Manhattan project.[3]

• Territorial claims in the Arctic
• Northern Sea Route
• Double acting ship

Notes

Sources

• Keating, Bern; Sennett, Tomas (March 1970). "Through the Northwest Passage for Oil". National Geographic. Vol. 137 no. 3.
• Byers, Michael (September 2006). On Thinning Ice. University of British Columbia (Podcast).
• Smith, William D. (1970). Northwest Passage, The Historic Voyage of the S.S. Manhattan. American Heritage. ISBN 9780070584600.
• "S.S. Manhattan & the Northwest Passage". Sun Ship Historical Society. 12 July 2005.

• "The First Arctic Tanker" (pdf). Surveyor. American Bureau of Shipping: 18. Summer 2005.
• Gedney, Larry; Helfferich, Merritt (19 December 1983). "Voyage of the Manhattan". Alaska Science Forum. Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 639.
• "Voyage of Arctic discovery". International Esso Tankers. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012.
• "Polar Voyage Manhattan". International Esso Tankers (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 14 March 2012.
• "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976". Office of the Historian. United States Department of State. 12 March 1970. Imminent Canadian Legislation on the Arctic. Document 367.