8vo (213 x 134 mm). Chromolithographed frontispiece, 6 color-printed folding maps (one map repaired at fore-edge, a few small chips), photogravure portrait; 32pp. advertisements at end. (A few maps with translucent coating from old restoration, some spotting.) Publisher's blue cloth gilt (rebacked preserving original spine, some light rubbing and staining). Provenance: A. J. Twoling, S. S. Howth Head (signature); collector's bookplate, a few pencil marks. 

FIRST EDITION of the posthumously published journal by the captain who came closest to the site where Franklin's expedition ended. "In 1849 Collinson was appointed to command an expedition for the relief of Sir John Franklin, by way of the Bering Strait; he himself had command of the Enterprise, and with him was Commander Robert Le Mesurier McClure in the Investigator. The two ships sailed together from Plymouth on 20 January 1850 but unfortunately separated in the neighbourhood of Cape Horn and did not meet again. The Enterprise passed Point Barrow, Alaska, on 21 August, but the ice forced Collinson to return south and winter in Hong Kong. In 1851 he was again hampered by ice and in 1852 was frozen in at Cambridge Bay for the winter. In 1853 the Enterprise was caught in the ice at Camden Bay, and there passed a third winter. She reached Point Barrow on 8 August 1854, after being shut up in the Arctic, entirely on her own resources, for upwards of three years. Of the many who had searched for Franklin, Collinson came closest to the place where the expedition had ended. Collinson's addition to geographical knowledge on this Arctic trip was very considerable, and would have been tantamount to the discovery of the north-west passage, had this not been already actually achieved by the men of the Investigator" (DNB). RARE. Arctic Bibliography 3351; Hill 337; Ricks p 68; Tourville 986.