"Arctic Squadron off Cape Wrath. April 29th 1852"

£9,500 · Offered by Maggs Bros Ltd

A dramatic watercolour depicting the largest scale, and final, Admiralty effort to rescue the lost men of Sir John Franklin from the Arctic regions. This picture, retained by the captain of HMS Resolute , shows the fleet of five vessels with their two supply ships, off the northwestern-most tip of mainland Scotland. Sir Edward Belcher was an experienced naval surveyor, when in 1852, he was tasked with leading an exploratory squadron of Arctic veterans through the Bering Strait. They were in search of not just the crews of Erebus and Terror , who by this point had not been sighted since entering Baffin Bay in July 1845, but also those of the previous search expeditions in Investigator and Enterprise , whose own fates were unknown. The fleet comprised barques Assistance (Sir Edward Belcher) and Resolute (Henry Kellett), steam tenders Pioneer (Sherard Osborn) and Intrepid (Sir Leopold McClintock), as well as the depot ship North Star (William Pullen). Also depicted in the present watercolour are steam support vessels Basilisk and Desperate who provided towage through the North Sea, and accompanied the squadron as far as the ice. The artist, George Frederick McDougall (c.1825-1871) served as masted on the Resolute , and authored a memoir titled The eventful voyage of HM discovering ship Resolute , published in 1857 and illustrated with prints after his own drawings. The woodcut vignette heading chapter 1 echoes the present watercolour, though it does not include the two support s

• Year: 1852

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