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Mummy Monday #1: Franklin Expedition Ice Mummies

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[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
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Two and a Half Years Before the Mast: A Second View on the Hartnell Family - Part 1

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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
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Finding Mr. Strickland

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It's been a good minute or two since I last updated this blog, and I figured the best way to do so was to pick up precisely where I left off with Hartnell research. My last post about the Hartnell family is definitely in sore need of updating (I've learned way  more since then!), but I've been so excited about the topic I'm outlining today that it can wait another... year or so. I kid. Hopefully. Since late 2016, researching the Hartnell family has been a sort of core focus of mine. As far as a return on my efforts go, it hasn't been much as - first of all - I live very  far away from the National Archives, SPRI, Chatham Dockyard, Gillingham, &c. since there are quite a few miles between Michigan and England and I'm not exactly celebrating any major financial bounty that'll get me there any time soon. Secondly, John and Thomas Hartnell's family were not wealthy or had any major social bearing outside of an uncle who was a respected clerk in Plymou
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hide and seek with a ghost; the non-fictional biography of john hartnell, and the fiction to come

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Creating a fictional character is something of a mad science. You feel a little bit like Victor Frankenstein at times, looking down at your patchwork creation that is a little bit of one thing you've seen, a little bit of another. You see some of your friends in this character, some of your enemies, something you saw on TV or read in a book. Your character becomes what you want it to be, and sometimes what you don't. But in the end, this character is yours. You can do what you'd like with them to a degree.  Writing about an actual person might just be a lesson in futility, in comparison. I sometimes wonder if it's easier for some people than others, writing out detailed biographies and combing through letters and records in musty libraries and archives. In this case, there's some line to follow that's been set out long before you even began your work. There's a timeline, although not always definitive, and there's major events throughout the timeline t
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