I would like to thank the services of the NWT Archives and Library and Archives Canada whose online and offline collections have made this work possible. I am equally grateful for the volunteer digitizers of Project Gutenberg who made searching and indexing Franklin’s journal feasible.
I would also like to thank the legion of Franklin scholars and enthusiasts whose passion has continued unabated since Franklin’s disappearance in 1845. Their books, blogs, and articles were incredibly helpful in verifying and contextualizing my own amateur research.
Finally, I would like to thank the Indigenous people of the North on whose lands Franklin and his men met their fate. Perhaps the greatest contribution of the overland expeditions was respect for the land, which was sadly earned through so much suffering.
– R. Rawat