A silver fiddle-pattern teaspoon belonging to Lieutenant James Walter Fairholme of HMS Erebus from the 1845 British Northwest Passage Expedition led by Sir John Franklin. The front of the handle is engraved with owner's crest of a dove with an olive branch and the motto 'SPERO MELIORA' (I hope for better things). The spoon has London hallmarks, the date code for 1842 and the maker’s mark of John & Henry Lias - the initials 'IL', 'HL'.

The teaspoon was bartered from a group of Inuit by Captain F. L. McClintock's sledge team one of two possible occasions, The first was in early March 1859 near Cape Victoria, Boothia Peninsula. Here the sledge team met about 45 Inuit who bartered relics that included 'six silver spoons and forks...' The second occasion was on 7 May 1859 near Cape Norton, east side of King William Island where McClintock wrote 'I purchased from them six pieces of silver plate, bearing the crests or initials of Franklin, Crozier, Fairholme and McDonald,...' In his appendix McClintock allocates the teaspoon to this latter meeting and records 'Two teaspoons...the other bears the Fairholme crest and motto' [McClintock, Voyage of the Fox (1859), pages 232, 260, and 370].

It is not certain that the silver teaspoon was displayed at the Royal Naval Museum, Greenwich. The item is 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. 9 (right, below the group of buttons).