Sir John Franklin's Arctic Medal?

News this morning has emerged that an Arctic Medal, in the possession of the Stromness Museum in Orkney, has been identified as Sir John Franklin's own medal. Certainly, if that's accurate, this modest token would almost at once become the most valuable and significant medal of its kind. One which came to auction a few years ago -- that belonging to Lieutenant John Irving -- sold for $60,000, and there's every reason to believe that Franklin's own medal would be worth many times that.

But how came it there, and how certain is the identification? I met with Janette Park, the curator in Stromness, this past May, at which point she seemed confident that the medal was one of significance, but was still awaiting further research. This was apparently provided by Jeremy Michell at the National Maritime Museum, and although somewhat tenuous, the conjectured line of provenance would run something like this: Sir John was immensely fond of his niece Catherine and her husband the Rev. Drummond Rawnsley; he visited them just a few months before he sailed on his final, fatal voyage. He was there to serve as godfather at the christening of their son, Willingham Franklin Rawnsley, named after his late brother, and presented them with a bound volume including a Bible and prayer book, which he inscribed:

To Willingham Franklin Rawnsley, from his affectionate Uncle and Godfather, on the day of his baptism, 23d March 1845, John Franklin. Search the scriptures. Pray with spirit and with understanding also.

This very infant, as fate would have it, grew up to compile a life of his great-uncle's wife Lady Jane, which was published in 1923 when he was seventy-eight. The Rawnsleys thus had rich reasons to remember Sir John -- which thus connects them with a slip of paper, formerly adhering to the medal, with the initials F.A.R., thought to be those of Francis Anna Rawnsley. The medal remained in the Rawnsley line, and was brought to the Stromness Museum by Rosalind Rawnsley, so the line of provenance is entirely plausible. Unfortunately, no correspondence or family mention of the medal survives, so the line is still somewhat conjectural. There is one other bit of evidence -- a reference to Franklin's medal missing its eyelet and ribbon, which also matches this exemplar. It's also worth noting that the medal is not mentioned in any of the documents associated with Sophia Cracroft, Lady Franklin's niece and one of the executors of her will, and thus was not among the many Franklin-related items from her estate which passed to the Scott Polar Research Institute in the Lefroy Bequest. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, of course -- but here it at least does not contradict the conjectured transmission of the medal to the Rawnsleys, though it suggests that it more likely happened before Lady Franklin's death. If so, the gift was surely made in the spirit of the strong bonds of affection which linked Sir John to the family -- and so, in any case, makes this medal one of unusually significant historical interest.