Cruising Vicariously with MS Hanseatic

The Arctic as seen from the bridge of MS Hanseatic.

Photo courtesy of Hapag-Lloyd Cruises

Taken off the coast of Greenland, this remarkable image from the bridge webcam aboard Hapag-Lloyd Cruises' MS Hanseatic gives armchair cruisers a tantalizing glimpse of one of the most remote parts of the world: the Arctic.

On Monday, August 16, viewers can tune into the live webcam feed for a first-hand look as MS Hanseatic begins her amazing transit of the Northwest Passage, a voyage that will take her from Kangerlussuaq, Greenland to Nome, Alaska in a mere twenty-six days.  

For hundreds of years, explorers from many European countries set out in search of the fabled 'Northwest Passage; in almost every case, the amount of life lost was appalling.  Unaccustomed to the ever-shifting ice and navigating in a veritable no-man's land (most of the Arctic areas simply didn't exist on maps yet), many ships became trapped in the ice for months or even years at a time, forcing their crews to set out on foot in search of rescue or hope that the ice would break up sufficiently in spring to allow them to make a dash for the open freedom of the Atlantic Ocean.

The most famous failed expedition is, of course, the Franklin Expedition.  Having wintered for several years on the ice, the expedition finally became completely locked in the ice during the fall of 1846 - and would remain there until the surviving crew were forced to abandon their ships, Erebus and Terror, in the spring of 1848 on a desperate attempt to reach a Hudson's Bay outpost hundreds of miles to the south.  

Their fates - and how far they travelled on foot -  remain largely unknown.

With the highest ice rating available on a passenger ship, MS Hanseatic makes this once treacherous journey with an ease Franklin's men could only have dreamed of - and in five-star comfort, no less.  While the 2010 voyage is sold out, MS Bremen will make an identical journey - in reverse order - from Nome to Greenland in August 2011.  At 27 days in length, it represents an amazing opportunity to travel to a destination that is as deep and mysterious as it is rich and rewarding.

Be sure to watch MS Hanseatic's progress via the ship's webcam, and visit the Hapag-Lloyd Cruises website for all the details on MS Bremen's 2011 transit of the Northwest Passage.