Hymn book sent to Sir John Franklin on H.M.S. Erebus

In 1845, Sir John Franklin led the ships H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror on an expedition to discover the North West Passage. After no word from the expedition, the Admiralty sent out search parties in 1848. Eleanor Isabella (1824-1860) was Franklin's only child; her mother, the poet Eleanor Anne Porden, was Franklin's first wife and died soon after she was born. Eleanor sent this slim volume of hymns as a gift to her father with Sir James Ross, who led one of the first search parties for Franklin's expedition in 1848.

The flyleaf of the hymn book is inscribed 'To my dear father from his very affec[tiona]te daughter, Eleanor Isabella Franklin, 9th May 1848'. Ross' search party was frozen in at Port Leopold in what is now Nunavut, Canada. When Ross returned after an unsuccessful search, he brought back the gift in its original wrapper to Eleanor. In 1859, when Sir Leopold McClintock's search party found the 'Victory Point Note', it was discovered that Sir John Franklin had died on 11 June 1847.