Joseph Randall from Wexford and his Arctic and Crimean medals. UPDATE: THIS MADE 3,600 AT HAMMER
For Whyte’s auctioneers the announcement from Canada’s Prime Minister this week that one of two ships from the Franklin expedition which vanished in the Arctic more than 160 years ago has been found proved timely. Lot 578 in their sale collectibles sale in Dublin on September 20 is the Arctic and Crimean medals awarded to Wexford man Joseph Randall, who sailed on the HMS Herald in 1848 in a search for the lost expedition. Joseph Randall’s medals are estimated at 1,000-1,500.
Sir John Franklin led the two ships and 129 men in 1845 to chart the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Arctic. The expedition’s disappearance shortly after became one of the great mysteries of the age of Victorian exploration.The loss of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, which was built in Topsham, Devon, prompted one of largest searches in history, running from 1848 to 1859. The search resulted in the discovery of the Northwest Passage, which runs from the Atlantic to the Pacific through the Arctic archipelago.
The Canadian government began searching for Franklin’s ships in 2008 as part of a strategy to assert Canada’s sovereignty over the Northwest Passage, which has recently become accessible to shipping because of melting Arctic ice. Expedition sonar images from the waters of Victoria Strait, just off King William Island, clearly show the wreckage of a ship on the ocean floor.
UPDATE: THIS MADE 3,600 AT HAMMER