Letter and rough copy of letter from Captain Henry Kellett to Sir John Barrow, from HMS RESOLUTE, Melville Island, 12 April 1853 covers details of the voyage from 14 August 1852 to April 1853.
Kellett berthed his ships for the coming winter at Dealy Island off the south shore of Melville Island. An autumn travelling party under Lieutenant Frederick Mecham visited Winter Harbour, 50 miles to the west, and there discovered a record planted by McClure from which it was learned that Investigator had discovered a northwest passage and that it had later become icebound in the Bay of Mercy on the north shore of Banks Island. The Arctic winter was too far advanced for help to be sent until the following spring. In the bitter cold of March 1853, Lieutenant Bedford Pim made the 160-mile journey by dog-sledge across Viscount Melville Sound to bring McClure word of the rescue ships. INVESTIGATOR was abandoned on Kellett’s order and her starving and scurvy-ridden crew trekked over the ice to Dealy Island. In the meantime, under Kellett’s direction, M’Clintock and Mecham, on sledge journeys of great length, found no trace of Franklin, but added Eglinton and Prince Patrick islands to the map of the Arctic.

Also contains one volume on the zoology of the voyage of HMS HERALD under the command of Captain Henry Kellett during the years 1845-1851.