The d'Artois expedition

I've been busy writing the backstory of the d'Artois expedition in an attempt to cover what on earth they'd been doing while missing in the Arctic for three years (I've cheated by implying that the rescue mission began to be planned a few months after the second anniversary, so that when Leroux says that no news of them had been heard for three years we're actually only 'in the third year', and not that many months into it at the start of the novel!)

I was also wondering how I was going to justify the rescue mission's having been delayed so long, when the alarm ought to have been raised at a far earlier stage -- it's not nearly so far to the Arctic as to the Antarctic, and it's unlikely the expedition was planned to last more than one year in any case, even if they didn't send back word of their safe arrival. ( Read more... )