Ice, shallow water, and jurisdictional disputes have prevented regular use of the Northwest Passage for the transport of goods.
Northwest Passage = a water route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific Ocean along the northern coast of North America
That trip was relatively uneventful, but in 1845, hoping finally to discover the fabled Northwest Passage, Franklin made the mistake of returning to the Arctic for a third time.
(source) Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild, 1996
They'd sailed in search of the Northwest Passage, as many Spaniards did in those days, and their pilot and captain, Martin de Aquilar of the Vizcaino expedition, sent a work detail ashore to cull a fresh spar pole from among the hemlocks at water's edge.
(source) David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars, 1995
He tried to do it like it was something he did all the time, as if touching her someplace new wasn't like discovering the Northwest Passage.
(source) Rainbow Rowell, Eleanor & Park, 2013
The woman sounded triumphant, as if she'd discovered the Northwest Passage, which we'd just learned about at the end of the school year.
(source) Sarah Dessen, Someone Like You, 1998
One of them came up this way on a side excursion from the Northwest Passage.
(source) Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
You see, it was just the Northwest Passage of that day, as you may say; that was all.
(source) Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, 1889
THREE SECONDS before the arrival of J. B. Hobson's letter, I no more dreamed of chasing the unicorn than of trying for the Northwest Passage.
(source) Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1869
Is it the source of the Nile, or the Niger, or the Mississippi, or a Northwest Passage around this continent, that we would find?
(source) Henry David Thoreau, Walden, 1854
We're really on a kind of Northwest Passage too.
(source) Robert M. Pirsig, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, 1974
After the South Pole, does our captain want to tackle the North Pole, then go back to the Pacific by the notorious Northwest Passage?
(source) Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, 1869
