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Description: | A relic of Sir John Franklin's last expedition 1845-8. A silver, fiddle-pattern table fork owned by Sir John Franklin (1786-1847). The back of the handle bears the Franklin crest - a conger eel's head, between two branches. The fork has London hallmarks, the date code for 1844-45 and the maker's mark of George Adams - the initials 'GA'. It was bought from the Inuit at Cape Norton, on the East Coast of King William Island, 7 May 1859 by a party from the McClintock Search Expedition 1857-9 led by McClintock himself. The inhabitants of King William Island had wooden bows and arrows and naval buttons like the Inuit already encountered on the Boothia Peninsula, but McClintock decided to acquire only items associated with identifiable members of the missing expedition.
Franklin joined the Royal Navy in 1800 and accompanied Matthew Flinders on his circumnavigation of Australia in 1802-1803. He was midshipman in ?Bellerophon? at Trafalgar. Still a junior officer at the end of the war, he subsequently became involved in Arctic exploration. Franklin commanded the ?Trent? in 1818 in an attempt to find a route to the North Pole through the pack ice north of Spitsbergen. An overland expedition to the Arctic coast in 1819-1822, though not unsuccessful, ended with some loss of life and the near starvation of the survivors. A second overland expedition in 1825-1827 went more smoothly though Franklin's first wife, Eleanor Porden, died during his absence. He remarried Jane Griffin in 1828. Between 1837 and 1844 Franklin served as Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen's Land. On his return to England he accepted the command of an expedition to chart the unexplored gap in the North West passage. His two ships ?Erebus? and ?Terror? sailed in 1845, their fate only revealed years later, after many search expeditions. Franklin died on board ship whilst beset off King William Island before his crews abandoned their vessels in a futile attempt to treck south to safety.
caption: cutlery, Fiddle pattern | Publisher: | "http://collections.rmg.co.uk/" | Rights holder: | "Royal Museums Greenwich" | Subjects: | McClintock Expedition forks Fox 1855 Franklin Adams Royal Naval Museum Inuit John Native George | Source: | Royal Museums Greenwich | Identifier: | http://collections.rmg.co.uk/collections... | Go to resource |
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