Changes

The major hazard for ships attempting to sail the passage is free-floating ice.  Within Baffin Bay icebergs calved from Greenland's glaciers drift south by the thousands; much of the central portion of the route as well as the Beaufort Sea suffers from the polar ice cap pushing ice south; this can funnel a mass of ice through the waterways within the archipelago as well as the Bering Strait during much of the year.  Many ships that have sailed within this area have found themselves trapped by the ice and forced to "winter-over" until the spring thaw.

The major hazard for ships attempting to sail the passage is free-floating ice.  Within Baffin Bay icebergs calved from Greenland's glaciers drift south by the thousands; much of the central portion of the route as well as the Beaufort Sea suffers from the polar ice cap pushing ice south; this can funnel a mass of ice through the waterways within the archipelago as well as the Bering Strait during much of the year.  Many ships that have sailed within this area have found themselves trapped by the ice and forced to "winter-over" until the spring thaw.

 

==History==

==History==

Prior to Columbus, trade goods came to Europe from China and India via overland routes like the Silk Road, which had its terminus in Constantinople.  The conquest of that city as well as much of the Middle East by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th century prompted the first series of explorations westward by sea.  Before the 1490s had ended it had been realized that the new lands found by Columbus were not part of the Far East; this prompted Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 to sail to India by way of a southern voyage around Africa, and another Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, to sail to what was then called the East Indies (Indonesia) by going around the southern tip of South America and into the Pacific Ocean.

Prior to Columbus, trade goods came to Europe from China and India via overland routes like the Silk Road, which had its terminus in Constantinople.  The conquest of that city as well as much of the Middle East by the Ottoman Turks in the mid-15th century prompted the first series of explorations westward by sea.  Before the 1490s had ended it had been realized that the new lands found by Columbus were not part of the Far East; this prompted Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 to sail to India by way of a southern voyage around Africa, and another Portuguese explorer, Ferdinand Magellan, to sail to what was then called the East Indies (Indonesia) by going around the southern tip of South America and into the Pacific Ocean.