i also watched half of a very bad youtube on how the first searches were organised, with a terrible narrator and no hint that the iced up ships were remanned and sailed on from the place they first froze into the ice and have now been tracked down. the one good anecdote was that some prankster claimed a franklin message balloon had come to earth in their gloucester garden in 1851. franklin had no such balloons tho they were used in some of the searches for him, and they weren't -- as the youtube vid said -- "helium balloons", bcz helium wasn't theorised for another 15 years and only isolated in the 1890s
― mark s, Wednesday, 15 February 2023 19:34 (one year ago) link