BHM 165.
43mm. Silver. 46.75g. By Boulton.
Obverse with bust of George III, reverse showing two ships at sea, The Resolution and The Adventure.
Accompanied by a silver, unmounted specimen example of the Arctic 1818-1855 medal. Both medals once cleaned but now retoned. Extremely Fine and extremely rare. Housed in contemporary fitted case (this in a poor state and with lid detached).
Original records for these medals suggest that two specimens were struck in gold, 106 in silver and 2,000 in bronze. The Admiralty paid Boulton for the bronze medals and had them sent to Cook. The two gold and 106 silver were sent, with invoices, to Joseph Banks who was to act as Botanist on the voyage. Banks later withdrew from the voyage and it is presumed that he either sold the silver medals, or gave them to interested people.
This pair of medals was formerly the property of the family of John Cleveley the Younger (25 December 1747 – 25 June 1786), a British artist and marine painter.
John was employed to turn drawings made on Captain Cook’s second voyage to the South Seas (1772–75) into engravings, and later also got access to some of the art produced on the third voyage, 1776-80 (via drawings and eyewitness accounts made by his brother James, who was a carpenter on the third voyage). Despite going on neither expedition personally, John moved fast to cash in on the new demand for South Seas images, producing images for the print market such as the Death of Cook, and HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery at Moorea.
The Arctic medal was authorized in 1857 and awarded, unnamed, to those who had been engaged in expeditions of discovery or search expeditions from 1818. Therefore, the reason for these two medals being together, when issued 85 years apart, is unknown. It could be that a later descendant obtained this medal and a member of the family thought to house them together in a specially commissioned case. The fact that the medal is in specimen form suggests that the recipient possibly obtained the medal due to position or connection, as opposed to having actually served within the Arctic sphere.