Young’s Auctions, which holds sales at West Horsley near Guildford, is offering the honour awarded posthumously to Able Seaman Henry Sait on February 17, estimated at £4000-6000.
Sait was a crewman on the famed 1845-48 expedition which set out from Britain under Sir John Franklin.
The follow-up searches for Franklin, his crews and his two ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, became almost as famous as the original venture.
Sait served on the Terror.
This Arctic Medal was instituted on January 30, 1857, and awarded retrospectively to all officers and men involved in polar exploration from 1818-55, including those actually hunting for Franklin.
Chris Young, owner and auctioneer at Young’s, says the medal came from a house in Raynes Park, south London.
A lady who had died bequeathed her home and property to a friend, which included this medal.
The house owner, a “very thorough lady”, says Young, “kept a handwritten inventory of her precious possessions, in an album”.
This information stated that Sait was her great-great grandfather and the medal passed to her great-grandfather Robert Sait and then to her uncle, William Yule Sait, and to her in 1968.
Unlike many medals, these Arctic Medals were not engraved with the name of the recipient, although some later did that privately.
