Kirkwall Cathedral
Lieutenant Graham Gore (d. c.1847)
Category
Art / Drawings and watercolours
Date
1845
Materials
Paper
Order this imageCollection
Dunham Massey, Cheshire
NT 936042.3
Summary
Pencil on paper, Kirkwall Cathedral by Lieutenant Graham Gore. Enclosed in envelope, inscribed 'Sacred Relic'. Handwritten note on the reverse of drawing 'Sketch of the Cathedral at Kirkwal [sic] by Lieutenant Gore 1st of the Erebus May 1845 when starting on a voyage of Discovery to the N.W'. Lieutenant Gore was part of the crew of HMS Erebus, a Hecla-class bomb vessel launched in 1826, which, along with HMS Terror, set out on an expedition under Sir John Franklin in 1845 to gather magnetic data in the Canadian Arctic and to complete a crossing of the Northwest Passage, which had already been charted from both the east and west but had never been entirely navigated. Both ships became icebound after last being seen entering Baffin Bay in August 1845, and were abandoned by their crews, in total about 130 men, all of whom subsequently died from a number of causes, including hypothermia, scurvy, and starvation while trying to trek overland to the south (Wapedia). It seems probable that the Gore sketch would have been given to Captain Owen Stanley, who served alongside him on HMS Terror, on an Arctic expedition, 1836-7, and who was Captain on HMS Blazer, a supply ship to the Franklin expedition, in 1845. After Owen Stanley's death in 1850, it presumably passed with other mementos to his family and hence to his sister Catherine Maria Vaughan, née Stanley (1821-1899,) and thence with her bequest to the Earl of Stamford.
Provenance
Stamford collection; devised to the National Trust by Roger Grey, 10th Earl of Stamford (1896-1976).
Marks and inscriptions
Sacred Relic / 1845 (underlined and handwritten in ink on front of envelope); Sketch of the Cathedral at Kirkwall / by Lieutenant Gore 1st of the Erebus / May 1845 when starting on a voyage / of Discovery to the N.W. (handwritten in ink on reverse of sketch)
Makers and roles
Lieutenant Graham Gore (d. c.1847), artist