Back when maritime expeditions were voyages into the complete unknown, setting out to sea was as adventurous as it was deadly. For John Hartnell of the infamous Franklin Expedition of 1845, the Arctic quest to find the Northwest Passage ended in icy doom.
The 134-man crew set out on two ships, determined to find the elusive shortcut to Asia and thereby further open up British trade. But soon after departing England in May, they were never seen again.
It was only in the 1980s that an anthropologist finally found some of the buried bodies, preserved by the cold, on an icy island in the Canadian Arctic. Hartnell’s twisted expression here makes for one of the creepiest images of seafaring expeditions ever taken.
