Portable cooking apparatus - stove and tray

A portable stove and tray from the 1845 British Northwest Passage Expedition led by Sir John Franklin. The stove is made from copper sheathing marked with the broad arrow and perforated air holes in the base. The burner compartment has a door, now separated, with a catch made from a key. The deep tray has a reinforced rim and may have originally been a wash basin.

The cooking apparatus was found by Lieutenant William R. Hobson's sledge team on 3 May 1859 at an abandoned camp site at Cape Felix, King William Island, as part of the search expedition led by Captain F. L. McClintock. Hobson described it as '...a small copper stove, apparently ship made,..' [Stenton, 'Arctic' v.69, No. 4, p. 515]. McClintock recorded it as 'a small, roughly made copper apparatus for cooking' [McClintock, 'Voyage of the Fox' (1860), p.367].

The stove is marked with white paint on the front 'PORTABLE COOKING APPARATUS FOUND ON THE NW SHORE KING WILLIAM ISLAND' and the stove tray is marked in white with 'COOKING APPARATUS (1)' indicating that it was displayed at the Royal Naval Museum, Greenwich. The item is also shown in - 'Stereoscopic slides of the relics of Sir John Franklin's Expedition' photographed by Lieutenant Cheyne RN, at the United Services Museum, Whitehall, No. 1.