Northwest Passage, 1752

Northwest Passage is basically the sea-route (s) crossing the Bering Strait and going all the way along the Arctic Ocean through the Labrador Sea (between Greenland and Canada). The Northeast Passage also crosses through the Bering Strait but passes through the Arctic Ocean above Russia - the waters of Barents Sea, Kara Sea, Laptev Sea, East Siberian Sea and passes through the Norwegian Sea between Iceland and the Faroe Islands. And as any unexplored adventure, Northwest Passage took numerous attempts by explorers starting from the 16th century. But, it would take several centuries for humans to actually traverse the entire sea-route. 

In 1906, the Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen would be the first person to travel all across the Northwest Passage. But going back to the late medieval ages, English explorers such as Martin Frobisher, John Davis, and Henry Hudson searched unsuccessfully for it from the Atlantic side in the late 1500s and early 1600s. The map here is dated 1752 and translation of a French one by Joseph Nicolas de L'Isle. It shows various discoveries by navigators and explorers such as Captain Tchikirkov, Admiral de Fonte, Jean de Fuca etc. 

Martin d'Aguilar, a Spanish explorer, was the first one to have discovered an entry point to today's Oregon state, back in 1603. He was also one of the earliest to map out the western coast of Oregon. Juan de Fuca (originally Ioannis Phokas), a Greek explorer found an entrance between Oregon and Vancouver in 1592, which he earlier thought as the divider between Asia and North America, and named it as Strait of Anián (today its literally known as Strait of Juan de Fuca). Aleksei Chirikov (Tchirikov) from Russia would be first Russian to reach the northwest from Kamchatka (spelled as Kamtschatka) peninsula, in 1741. And lastly, French Admiral Bartholomew de Fonte in 1640 discovered lands in northern Canada and had imagined a lake with few islands in it which was named as Lake de Fonte. A couple of other imaginary places were Valasco Lake, St. Lazarus Archipelago, the West Sea, Lake Belle, Lake Michinam etc. With further discoveries, these regions would now be part of the island chain in the Nunavut region of Canada. 

 

The map of northwest North America (which is majorly Alaska and some parts of Canada) got a slightly better sight of the Alaskan coast in the 1820s. By 1870s much of Canadian coast and islands were now discovered and were named after British subjects - Cockburn, Prince Patrick, Dundas, Cornwallis, Melville, Grinnell etc. Finally by early 20th century, all the boundaries of Canada and Alaska were discovered. The map here is lists out all the names mentioned in this post.