KENNEDY, William.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

A Short Narrative of the Second Voyage of the Prince Albert, in Search of Sir John Franklin. First edition, association copy, with a contemporary gift inscription on the front free endpaper to Alfred Henry Alston, a mate on HMS North Star, which was despatched in 1849 to locate and resupply Sir James Clark Ross's search for Sir John. The author mentions the ship several times in his narrative and, on page 167, describes Alston as a "fine young officer."Alston (1829-1874), who was given this copy by his father in April 1853, was apprenticed to the Merchant Navy aged 15. North Star, commanded by James Saunders, sailed for the Arctic in 1849 and, on failing to find Ross or Franklin, carried out operations depositing stores along the Canadian Arctic coast. Trapped by the ice off north-west Greenland, she became the first Royal Navy vessel to winter so far north. Breaking free in August 1850, she eventually returned to England with crewmembers from other trapped vessels. Alston received a notice for "particular service" during the expedition and later served as a lieutenant on HMS Sybille during the Second Opium War.Born at Cumberland House, a Hudson's Bay Company post in Saskatchewan, Kennedy found employment with the Hudson's Bay Company. Following the return of Charles Forsyth's failed Franklin expedition in 1850, he was appointed to head a new attempt on the strength of a recommendation from his former chief at Fort Chimo in Labrador, John McLean. Although Kennedy "had no expe

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