SS Manhattan (1961)

For other ships with the same name, see Manhattan (ship).

SS Manhattan was an oil tanker constructed at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, that became the first commercial ship to cross the Northwest Passage in 1969. Having been built as an ordinary tanker in 1962, she was refitted for ice navigation during this voyage with an icebreaker bow in 1968–69.

SS Manhattan

SS Manhattan in 1969
History
United States
Builder	Fore River Shipyard
Launched	18 December 1961
Identification	IMO number: 5219369
Fate	Scrapped c.1987
General characteristics as built
Type	Oil tanker
Tonnage	105,000 deadweight tonnage
Length	940 ft (290 m)
Beam	132 ft (40 m)
Speed	17–18 knots (31–33 km/h; 20–21 mph)
General characteristics post conversion
Type	Oil tanker icebreaker
Tonnage	115,000 deadweight tonnage
Length	1,005 ft (306 m)
Beam	148 ft (45 m)
Draft	52 ft (16 m)
Installed power	43,000 shp (32,000 kW)
Speed	17 knots (31 km/h; 20 mph)

Registered in the United States at the time, she was the largest US merchant vessel.

In 1965, she was taken to Portland, Oregon via the Columbia River, to be cleaned and used to transport 50,000 tons of grain. The size and draught of the ship required careful preparations for her transit on the river.

SS Manhattan passing Astoria, Oregon, 1965.

Manhattan remained in service until 1987. After an accident in East Asia she was scrapped in China.

1969 Northwest Passage transit

Manhattan's route began in August 1969 from a berth on the Delaware River near Chester Pa. on the east coast of North America and transited the passage from east to west via the Baffin Sea and Viscount Melville Sound. The master of Manhattan was Captain Roger A. Steward, with 95 sailors. Heavy sea ice blocked the way through M'Clure Strait, so a more southerly route through Prince of Wales Strait and south of Banks Island was used. A single, token barrel of crude oil was loaded at Prudhoe Bay and then the ship went back. She was escorted by the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker CCGS John A. Macdonald. At various times during the expedition, Manhattan was supported by the icebreakers CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, USCGC Staten Island, and USCGC Northwind.

SS Manhattan during a transit

This route through the Northwest Passage was quite controversial in international relations as sovereignty of these waters is claimed by Canada and this claim has been disputed by the United States. The Government of Canada has defined all waters in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago as being "Canadian Internal Waters".

The voyage prompted passionate discussions in Canada about that country's sovereignty in the Arctic, a topic that dominated Arctic policy formulated under Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's administration throughout the 1970s. At one point during the voyage, Inuit hunters stopped the vessel and demanded that the vessel master ask permission to cross through Canadian territory, which he did, and they granted. The Canadian sovereignty debate generated by Manhattan is being rekindled as multi-year decreases in sea ice, due to global warming, make further ship transits likely in the future. The question is whether the passage can be considered an international strait or not.

The official reason for the voyage revolved around oil that had been discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968. Oil companies reasoned that sea transport of oil by icebreaking supertankers would be cheaper than the building of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System to Valdez. A second attempt to cross the passage in winter proved impossible, and there were numerous environmental concerns with the project, so it was cancelled and the Trans-Alaska pipeline built.

Icebreaker design using ice models

The conversion of Manhattan was a co-operation between its owner Esso and Wärtsilä, a Finnish shipbuilding company. Esso motivated for the use of models to optimize the ice breaking performance of the vessel, therefore the Wärtsilä Icebreaking Model Basin (WIMB) ice tank was built inside a converted air raid shelter in Helsinki, Finland, solely for this project. It was later used for Wärtsilä's own purposes until it was replaced by a new facility in the 1980s. Aker Arctic Technology, the Finnish engineering company that now uses the new ice tank thus owes its existence to the Manhattan project.

In popular culture

In 1969, the SS Manhattan gave rise to a board game based on its Northwest Passage transit, fittingly titled Northwest Passage!

See also

• Territorial claims in the Arctic
• Northern Sea Route
• Icebreaker-transport vessel

References

Notes

Sources

• Keating, Bern; Sennett, Tomas (March 1970). "Through the Northwest Passage for Oil". National Geographic. Vol. 137, no. 3.
• Byers, Michael (September 2006). On Thinning Ice. University of British Columbia (Podcast).
• Smith, William D. (1970). Northwest Passage, The Historic Voyage of the S.S. Manhattan. American Heritage. ISBN 978-0-07-058460-0.
• "S.S. Manhattan & the Northwest Passage". Sun Ship Historical Society. 12 July 2005.

Further reading

• Coen, Ross (2012). Breaking Ice for Arctic Oil: The Epic Voyage of the SS Manhattan Through the Northwest Passage. University of Alaska Press. ISBN 978-1-60223-169-6.

External links

• "The First Arctic Tanker". Surveyor. American Bureau of Shipping: 18. Summer 2005.
• Gedney, Larry; Helfferich, Merritt (19 December 1983). "Voyage of the Manhattan". Alaska Science Forum. Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks. 639. Archived from the original on 13 February 2005. Retrieved 28 August 2006.
• "Voyage of Arctic discovery". International Esso Tankers. Archived from the original on 14 March 2012.
• "Polar Voyage Manhattan". International Esso Tankers (in Dutch). Archived from the original on 14 March 2012.
• "Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976". Office of the Historian. United States Department of State. 12 March 1970. Imminent Canadian Legislation on the Arctic. Document 367.