A series of fourteen sketches...

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Walter William May ...A series of fourteen sketches made during the voyage up Wellington Channel in Search of Sir John Franklin and the missing crews of H.M. Discovery-Ships Erebus and Terror. London, 1855.

May was lieutenant with Sir Edward Belcher’s expedition, on the Assistance, which searched the Wellington Channel (1852-54). The relics shown (on the 6th page displayed above) were from an expedition led by Dr. John Rae, the first to find proof of the fate of the Franklin expedition. Rae purchased the relics from Inuit who told him that they had found the bodies of some 35 men who had died of starvation near the mouth of Great Fish River (now the Back River).