Rare Arctic rescue button makes £6,000 at auction

The face of the button has locations of provisions and routes of search ships

A rare Arctic rescue button was sold at auction on Tuesday for £6,000, which was 10 times its pre-sale estimate.

Auctioneer Brian Goodison-Blanks, of Bearnes, Hampton and Littlewood in Exeter, said only three other examples of this type of button were known to exist in the Smithsonian Institute and private collections.

The Arctic rescue button was part of a 19th Century expedition.

The rare piece of Arctic and Naval history attracted international interest in the specialist maritime sale.

The face of the button has locations of provisions and routes of search ships

After the disappearance of Sir John Franklin's Northwest Passage Expedition aboard HMS Terror and HMS Erebus in the 1840s, there were over 30 subsequent searches for the lost expedition members.

Mr Goodison-Blanks said: "As well as using balloons with notes tied to them and placing collars on Arctic foxes with messages to communicate to any survivors, search party teams took 'Rescue Buttons' which they handed out to Inuit hunters to pass onto any of Franklin's men they came across.

"The face of the button has locations of provisions and routes of search ships and dated to the reverse 1852."