The Legend of the Gedania Voyage Through the Northwest Passage

Abstract

This article analyzes a largely unknown voyage undertaken by Capitan Dariusz Bogucki in the summer of 1975 through the Northwest Passage on-board a Polish yacht called Gedania. This expedition was one of the first attempts to navigate the Arctic straits aboard a small sailing vessel and, although unsuccessful, has attained legendary status among Polish sailors. Despite a ban from the Canadian authorities, the Gedania, managed to penetrate 300 miles into the Canadian Arctic. In Resolute Bay the crew failed, however, to persuade local officials to issue a permit and was ordered to sail south immediately. During her retreat from the Arctic a debate among the Canadian public lasting several weeks began as to how a crew from communist Poland had sailed so far north without trouble, only a few years after the US tanker Manhattan had started a political crisis over Canadian sovereignty over the waters of the Northwest Passage. The aim of this article is to verify the legend of the Gedania voyage through the use of archival materials and to discover whether the reasons consent was refused to the Gedania were entirely based on practical considerations or whether they also had political dimensions.