Sailing through a granite quarry: the Northwest Passage and the voyage of the SS Manhattan

Abstract

Upon the discovery of the Prudhoe Bay (Alaska) oil field in 1968, North America's largest crude oil reservoir at roughly twenty billion barrels, Humble Oil devised an all-marine transportation method for bringing the reserves to markets in the eastern U.S. The proposal called for a fleet of icebreaking tankers to haul crude directly from the Alaska North Slope to New York through the fabled Northwest Passage. In 1969, Humble chartered the SS Manhattan, the largest tanker in the American fleet, to complete an experimental voyage in order to test the logistic and economic feasibility of the ice-choked Arctic passage as a commercial trade route. After extensive renovations that strengthened her hull with additional layers of steel, the icebreaking Manhattan became the first commercial vessel in history to successfully transit the Northwest Passage, but the experiment established the impracticability of the method for shipping oil. The history of the Manhattan demonstrates how landscapes shape both our interactions with and attitudes toward the natural world. The approach to development taken by Humble, with its emphasis on science and economics, brings into focus a host of other social issues that inform the relative values of the Arctic environment.