Robert McClure and his crew did, however, become the first to confirm and transit the Northwest Passage using a combination of sea travel and sledging.
They spent three years trapped in pack ice aboard the HMS Investigator, eventually abandoning the ship and being rescued.
Travel account
A folio of pictures by McClure’s second-in-command Lt Samuel Gurney Cresswell RN (1827-67) that was auctioned at Anderson & Garland (25% buyer’s premium) of Newcastle upon Tyne on June 5 covered their travels.
McClure and his crew returned to England in 1854, where he was knighted and honoured for completing the passage, following his acquittal from the standard court-martial for captains who lost their ships.
Cresswell had got back a year earlier. He is credited with announcing the discovery and documenting the journey.
The collection included eight chromolithograph plates and one chart which were published as A series of eight sketches in colour … of the voyage of H.M.S. Investigator, London, Day and Son and Ackermann and Co, 1854. They were based on Cresswell watercolours completed on his journey.
Though interleaved and unbound, the pieces remain preserved in their original fly-cover with a printed title page, encased within an associated period folio.
Offered with an estimate of £4000-6000 in the Books Auction, together with a coloured map of the route by Cresswell, the lot hammered down at £13,000.
Bound copies of this rare work have made more at auction. Last year Freeman’s Hindman sold a copy in contemporary half red morocco gilt for a premium-inclusive $28,350 (£22,680).
The Chicago auction house said at that time: “According to online records, we trace only four complete copies of Cresswell’s work sold at auction in the last 50 years.”
Cresswell had also served on Investigator during Sir James Clark Ross’ 1848 search for Franklin.
Canadian archaeologists discovered the Investigator wreck in July 2010, just 15 minutes into a sonar scan of Banks Island’s Mercy Bay in the Northwest Territories.
TE Lawrence translation
Sold for £4200 hammer at Anderson & Garland against an estimate of £500-900 was The Odyssey of Homer translated by TE Lawrence, aka Lawrence of Arabia.
In calf, illustrated, with gilt roundels emulating styles used in ancient Greek pottery, this work was privately printed by Sir Emery Walker, Wilfred Merton and the typographer Bruce Rogers, in a limited edition of 530 copies, 1932, and came with a slipcase.
Code creator
Another impressive performer, selling at £3000, double the low estimate, came in the form of Johannes Trithemius’ Polygraphie et Universelle Escriture Cabalistique (translated into French by Gabriel de Collange), Paris 1561.
Comprising two parts in one volume, in gilt calf, this work was illustrated with tables and moveable instruments designed to produce alignments of letters or symbols creating coded messages.
Trithemius, born Johann Heidenberg (1462-1516) in Trittenheim, was a German Benedictine abbot, polymath and occultist, sometimes considered the founder of modern cryptography and steganography. His two most famous works Steganographia and Polygraphia were deemed heretical by the Roman Catholic Church until the 1900s.
