Short answers, pulled from the story.
Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen was the first to complete the Northwest Passage entirely by ship, in a voyage that ran from 1903 to 1906. He sailed in the Gjoa, a converted herring boat of 45 net register tonnage, with a crew of six, departing from Kristiania (Oslo) in June 1903.
Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition became ice-locked near King William Island in 1846. Franklin died in 1847, and the surviving crew abandoned their ships in 1848, attempting to escape south by sledge. No survivors were ever found. Examination of frozen remains exhumed from Beechey Island in the 1980s revealed high lead concentrations, linked to the expedition's 8,000 tins of food sealed with lead-based solder.
On the 21st of August 2007, the Northwest Passage became open to ships without the need of an icebreaker. According to Nalan Koc of the Norwegian Polar Institute, this was the first time the passage had been clear since the institute began keeping records in 1972.
The sovereignty question remains unresolved. Canada classifies the waters as Canadian internal waters; the United States maintains they are an international strait subject to free transit passage. A 1988 agreement called "Arctic Cooperation" addressed practical navigation without settling the underlying legal dispute. As recently as June 2019, the U.S. State Department publicly called Canada's internal-waters claim inconsistent with international law.
The first commercial cargo ship to sail through the Northwest Passage did so in August 1969. SS Manhattan, of 115,000 deadweight tonnage, was the largest commercial vessel to navigate the passage at that time. The voyage was a test of whether the route could be used to transport Alaskan oil, but the route was ultimately judged not cost-effective.
Commander Robert McClure entered from the Pacific through the Bering Strait, reached Banks Island, and became trapped in ice for three winters. His starving crew was eventually rescued by sledge parties from Sir Edward Belcher's expedition, which had entered from the east. McClure and his crew completed the transit partly by ship and partly by sledge, returning to England in 1854. He was knighted and later made rear-admiral in 1867, and his crew shared a £10,000 prize from the British Parliament.