Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea Medal: Sir John Franklin, Search for …

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Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea Medal: Sir John Franklin, Search for the North-West Passage

AssociatedAssociated with Lord Mountbatten of Burma (Frogmore House, Windsor, England, 1900 - 1979)

Medallist John Pinches, Medallists

DateMay 2004

Object NameMedal

MediumSterling Silver

ClassificationsMedals

AcquisitionPresented in 2004 by Dr Joan M Burrell.

LocationView by Appointment - Aberdeen Treasure Hub

Object numberABDMS072500.58

Keywords

About MeThe search for the North-West Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific was begun by Elizabethan seamen such as Frobisher and Davis. They only penetrated Baffin Bay, so after the Napoleonic Wars were over the Secretary of the Admiralty, Sir John Barrow, began a series of expeditions to resume the search westward.

The most successful of these were the voyages of Sir Edward Parry in 1819 -1827, through Lancaster Sound and Barrow Strait to Melville Island, beyond which his sailing ship could not go. Meanwhile overland exploration had revealed vast tracts of northern Canada, and between 1819 and 1822 Sir John Franklin (1786 -1847) made an arduous journey down the Coppermine River to survey 650 miles of coastland. He had fought as a midshipman at the Battles of Copenhagen and Trafalgar. After his experience in the Arctic he was appointed governor of Tasmania, but when Barrow planned the last of his expeditions in 1845, Franklin, although by then over 60, volunteered to command the first steamships to be seen in the Arctic, HMS Erebus and Terror, lately returned from the Antarctic.

His instructions were to turn south from Barrow Strait instead of following Parry's track westward, to see if a passage existed in a lower latitude. Unfortunately the two ships were beset by ice in 1846 off King William Land. The story of the tragedy which followed had to be pieced together many years later when the relics of the lost expedition were found. Apparently, Franklin himself died in the first winter the ships were beset.

Rather than face a third winter in the ice, his second-in-command, Captain Crozier, decided to leave the ships (which have never been found) and made his way with the survivors on sledges to the Great Fish River. The march began in April 1848 and the men were last seen by Eskimos a few months before all of them perished in the snow. The whereabouts of the Passage were found during the many searches which were sent out during the next 20 years, though Amundsen in 1904 was the first to sail through it from west to east.

The first of the Franklin rescue operations was led by Sir James Clark Ross from the east in the Enterprise, with Lt McClintock in the Investigator. When this failed, McClure and Collin- son tried from the west and the latter really discovered the Passage in Dease and Simpson Straits. Finally Sir Leopold McClintock was sent by Lady Franklin in the Fox, and in 1859 it was he who found the first relics of the lost expedition, the greatest tragedy in polar history.

The Mountbatten Medallic History of Great Britain and the Sea, John Pinches Medallists Ltd.