In 1880, years before creating Sherlock Holmes, a young Arthur Conan Doyle went to the Arctic as the surgeon aboard a whaling ship. He recorded his adventures in journals full of notes and drawings, which have been published for the first time in a book called Dangerous Work.
http://www.npr.org/2012/10/25/163392051/from-ship-to-sherlock-doyles-arctic-diary
