Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria including the collection to Naval Artificers formed by JH Deacon

Pair: Sergeant R. Urquhart, Royal Marines

Arctic Discoveries 1818-55, unnamed as issued; Royal Navy L.S. & G.C., V.R., wide suspension (Sergt., R.M., H.M.S. Donegal, 21 Yrs.), one or edge bruises, very fine and better (2) £400-500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Collection of Medals formed by the late Jack Deacon.

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Robert Urquhart enlisted in the Royal Marines at Woolwich in February 1846, aged 19 years. Appointed as a Private, R.M., to H.M.S. Assistance in March 1850, he participated in the Franklin Search Expedition of 1850-51, when attached to the tender Intrepid. This was the expedition that located the graves of three of Franklin’s men, William Braine, John Hartnell and John Torrington, on Beechey Island, all three of them making a somewhat gruesome re-appearance in the media in 1986, when their near perfectly preserved bodies were re-located and photographed by a modern day research expedition. As a Royal Marine, there seems little reason to doubt that Urquhart participated in one of the sledging journeys carried out after the Intrepid had wintered off Cornwallis Island. Returning to an appointment at Woolwich in late 1851, he enjoyed two more seagoing appointments over the next decade and was finally discharged as a Sergeant from the Donegal in May 1867, in which month he received his L.S. & G.C. Medal.