over clouds in twilight skies

[WARNING: In-depth discussion of human remains along with relevant images, some of which may be disturbing.] In the electric hustle of the mid-1980s, there weren’t many eyes turned toward the loneliest corners of the Canadian Arctic. It was a forward-momentum period, caught up the 20th century’s mach-speed technological progress and cultural change. In all of this movement, it took something quietly monumental to turn heads toward the past and look, quite literally, into its eyes. The world looked into three 140-year-old graves in permafrost, and found three sets of eyes wearily looking back. Their names were John Torrington, John Hartnell, and William Braine. In Victorian society, they would have faded into the backdrop of the social tapestry. One was a working-class petty officer, another a former shoemaker that had recently joined the Navy, and the third a private in the Royal Marines. In their world, they were perfectly ordinary—but it was their deaths that mad...

Two and a half years ago, I wrote my very first Franklin Expedition-related post about John and Thomas Hartnell . For the most part, it was meant to be elementally biographical; a side use was as an on-hand compilation of virtually everything I knew about the Hartnell family up to that point. It was a very exciting thing for me, as I had never really taken my own turn in the realm of academia aside from class-assigned essays and the like. That post was a preliminary foray into something I ended up hardly being able to fathom. If I had known then how far that one little thread of research would taken me, I'm not sure what my reaction would have been—screaming, probably. My intent isn't to bore anyone with a VH1-esque 'Where Are They Now?' recap, aside to say that since September of 2017, study of the Franklin Expedition has saturated my entire life. I can claim some incredible friendships (Alison!! Shannon!!!!) and had some fantastic adventures to some far-flung place...