Way, way up north, far in the Canadian Arctic.

There's a lonely, wind-swept island.

No trees, nothing just pebblebeats, sit back by mountains.

Even in summer, it can be well below freezing on this island.

Cheats of ice float by in the bay, a crisp wind whips across its pebble beaches, and there

are no signs of life.

Out here, standing alone on this rock, are four simple wooden headstones.

These graves are the remnants of one of the most infamous Arctic expeditions of all time.

I'm Dylan Thoris, and this is Alice Obscura, an exploration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

In this two-part series, we are going to venture out towards those frozen graves, following

two groups of adventurers, separated by more than 170 years, and will play witness to the

disasters that befell them all.

Yeah, yeah, so I had a great time.

That is after this.

I am man in wooden ships.

A description of heroism never more apt is when applied to those who brave the Arctic.

I have to admit that I am a sucker for true life adventure stories.

The extraordinary tales, the human spirit against unforgiving odds, I kind of eat it up.

My bookshelf is embarrassingly full of these kinds of stories, and included among them, of

course, is one of the classics, one of the epics, the story of the Franklin Expedition.

Sir John Franklin was, at 59, a veteran of two overland expeditions in the North American

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