PREVIEW: ORDERS, DECORATIONS, MEDALS & MILITARIA 14 SEPTEMBER

Two Arctic Medals offered in this sale recall the fateful expedition to find an open polar sea thought to surround the North Pole in 1875-76.

A critical misjudgement by the second in command robbed the daring team who set out on sledges the chance to be the first men to make it to the North Pole. They fell just 400 miles short, although their record for reaching the furthest north stood for almost 20 years until Nansen broke it in 1895.

Under the command of the experienced polar explorer Sir George Nares, two ships, the Alert and the Discovery, set sail from Portsmouth on May 29, 1875.

Hoping to find the non-existent sea, they were instead confronted by an icy wasteland, altering their plans.

Nares ordered his second in command, Albert Hastings Markham, to head north with a team of men and sledges, aiming for the Pole. Unknow to them, their fate was sealed before they set out because of Markham’s catastrophic error over stores, as his own detailed account later revealed.

The expedition had suffered severely from scurvy, a deadly condition caused by deficiency of Vitamin C, making it essential for Markham, who commanded the Alert, to include a supply of frozen lime juice in his team’s stores, but he chose to leave it behind because of difficulties with defrosting it.

The result was that the sled team suffered a fresh outbreak of scurvy, a disaster exacerbated by inappropriate clothing and equipment.

The survivors made it back to the ships where Nares, acutely aware of the dangers of another winter on the ice, led both ships back southward in the summer of 1876.

The initial heroes’ welcome was followed by a public enquiry, with Markham attracting harsh criticism over his poor judgment. It also emerged that the ships’ crew were already suffering from scurvy when Markham set off with his team, condemning him to further obliquity. He used his later account, The Great Frozen Sea, A Personal Narrative of the Voyage of the “Alert” by Albert Hastings Markham, to try to exculpate himself.

Nares was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876, received the founder’s medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1877 and was awarded the Gold medal from the Société de Géographie in 1879. He also became a Knight Commander of the Bath (KCB) in 1876.
Markham went on to design the first national flag of New Zealand and enjoyed a successful naval career, rising to the rank of admiral and became a KCB.

In this sale, an Arctic Medal from the expedition awarded to George Stone, Petty Officer 2nd Class of the Discovery, is joined by another awarded to Vincent Domines, Cook 1st Class of the Alert.

Stone spent the winter of 1875 in Alert, one of only nine persons to have served in both ships during the expedition. In the Autumn of 1875 he was one of the crew of the sledge ‘Discovery’ with Lieutenant Wyatt Rawson when attempting to communicate with Discovery, and in the following Spring did a pioneer reconnaissance across the Robeson Channel for a week, before exploring the north coast of Greenland with the party under Lieutenant Beaumont, being away for 131 days.

Stone’s medal is estimated at £6,000-£8,000, while Domines’ medal is estimated at £5,000-£7,000.

Another Arctic Medal from the same expedition, awarded to Able Seaman George Smithers, Captain’s Coxswain of the Pandora, also carries an estimate of £5,000-£7,000.