Gjøa was the first vessel to transit the Northwest Passage. With a crew of six, Roald Amundsen traversed the passage in a three year journey, finishing in 1906.

The 70 by 20 ft (21 by 6.1 m) square-sterned sloop of 45 net register tonnage (4,500 cu ft, 130 m³) was built by Kurt Johannesson Skaale in Rosendal, Norway in 1872, the same year Amundsen was born. She was named Gjøa after her then owner's wife. (Gjøa is a modern form of the Norse name Gyða - this again is a compressed form of Guðfríðr, a compound of guð 'god' and fríðr 'beautiful'.) For the next 28 years the vessel served as a herring fishing boat.

In 1900, Amundsen bought her from Asbjørn Sexe of Ullensvang, Norway, for his forthcoming expedition to the Arctic Ocean. Gjøa was much smaller than vessels used by other Arctic expeditions, but Amundsen intended to live off the limited resources of the land and sea through which he was to travel, and reasoned that the land could sustain only a tiny crew (this had been the cause of the catastrophic failure of John Franklin's expedition fifty years previously). Her shallow draught would help her traverse the shoals of the Arctic straits. Perhaps most importantly, the aging ship was all that Amundsen (who was financing his expedition largely by spending his inheritance) could afford.^{[citation needed]}

Roald Engelbregt Gravning Amundsen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɾuːɑl ˈɑmʉnsən]; 16 July 1872 – c. 18 June 1928) was a Norwegian explorer of polar regions. He led the Antarctic expedition (1910-12) to discover the South Pole in December 1911 and he was the first expedition leader to (undisputedly) reach the North Pole in 1926. He is also known as the first to traverse the Northwest Passage (1903-06). He disappeared in June 1928 while taking part in a rescue mission. Amundsen, along with Douglas Mawson, Robert Falcon Scott, and Ernest Shackleton, was a key expedition leader during the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration.