Exhibition details
Title: Death in the Ice: The Shocking Story of Franklin’s Final Expedition
Location: National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London
Dates: 14 July 2017 – 7 January 2018
Lender details
Lender: Musée Canadien de la Guerre/ Canadian War Museum
Address: 1 Place Vimy Place, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0M8, Canada
Loan details
Lender ref: 19810018-001
Description: Naval General Service medal 1793-1840 with bars: Copenhagen 1801, Trafalgar and Boat Service 14 Dec 1814, awarded to Sir John Franklin, inscribed SIR JOHN FRANKLIN LIEUT R.N. The medal is suspended from a white ribbon with blue bands on either side.
Date: 1847
Object type: Medal
Dimension: Length 9.3 cm, Width 3.6 cm, Thickness 0.3 cm
Artist/Maker: Hunt & Roskell (British)
Marks/inscriptions: Sir John Franklin, Lieut R.N.
Provenance:
Purchased by the Canadian War Museum from Sotheby’s, London UK November 26 1980, Lot 127. The medal was sold by a private collector who purchased it from the last descendant of one of the branches of the Franklin family about 25 years prior.
Ownership 1933-45: Franklin Family - Apart from the information about the collector obtaining the medal from a member of one of the branches of the Franklin family 25 years prior, which would make it about 1955 (post-war), there is no record of anyone else having ownership of it or ever being offered for public sale. The Museum safely assumes that the Franklin family branch had ownership between 1933 and 1945.
Publications:
- “Orders and Medals Research Society” Autumn, 1981, p.185