<P> René - Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle built the sailing ship, Le Griffon, in his quest to find the Northwest Passage via the upper Great Lakes . Le Griffon disappeared in 1679 on the return trip of her maiden voyage . In the spring of 1682, La Salle made his famous voyage down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico . La Salle led an expedition from France in 1684 to establish a French colony on the Gulf of Mexico . He was murdered by his followers in 1687 . </P> <P> In 1772, Samuel Hearne travelled overland northwest from Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean, thereby proving that there was no strait connecting Hudson Bay to the Pacific Ocean . </P> <P> Most Northwest Passage expeditions originated in Europe or on the east coast of North America, seeking to traverse the Passage in the westbound direction . Some progress was made in exploring the western reaches of the imagined passage . </P> <P> In 1728 Vitus Bering, a Danish Navy officer in Russian service, used the strait first discovered by Semyon Dezhnyov in 1648 but later accredited to and named after Bering (the Bering Strait). He concluded by this sailing that North America and Russia were separate land masses . In 1741 with Lieutenant Aleksei Chirikov, he explored seeking further lands beyond Siberia . While they were separated, Chirikov discovered several of the Aleutian Islands while Bering charted the Alaskan region . His ship was wrecked off the Kamchatka Peninsula, as many of his crew were disabled by scurvy . </P>

A sea route through the arctic ocean in canada's north