[Shackleton, Ernest (1874-1922)]

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£ 10 080
Auction dateClassic
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +01:00
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CHRISTIE'S
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United Kingdom, London
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ID 794562
Lot 65 | [Shackleton, Ernest (1874-1922)]
[Shackleton, Ernest (1874-1922)]

A sterling silver napkin ring.

A NEW ZEALANDER NAPKIN RING, MARK OF BENJAMIN PETERSEN, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Plain, engraved with initials ERGE and inside with the inscription ‘from E.H.S.’

2cm high; 4cm diameter. Provenance: by descent.



After school career marked by fighting and truancy, the teenage Teddy Evans found the perfect outlet for his boundless physical energy and adventurous disposition in the Royal Navy; in 1897, he was posted to the Mediterranean as a midshipman aboard the cruiser HMS Hawke, before serving aboard the HMS Repulse and the training sloop Dolphin, and in 1900 he was promoted sub-lieutenant. Evans met then-lieutenant Robert Falcon Scott while posted aboard HMS Majestic, and when Scott sailed for the Antarctic the following year, Evans petitioned Sir Clements Markham to be seconded to the SY Morning, due to follow the Discovery as a relief ship. Sailing from London in 1902, the Morning located the Discovery fast in the polar ice; the two crews met in the McMurdo Sound, with Evans among the first party to greet the Discovery's crew, and the Discovery was re-supplied, but remained trapped in the ice. The Morning was obliged to leave her there for a second winter, returning to Christchurch for a re-fit with a number of the Discovery’s crew aboard, including her third officer, Ernest Shackleton. In January 1904 the Morning returned, accompanied by the Terra Nova; the Discovery was broken free from the ice in February, and the three ships returned home. Scott named Cape Evans in recognition of Teddy Evans’ role in the relief mission and, in 1909, selected him as second-in-command of his second Antarctic expedition, which left England in June 1910, with Evans as captain of the Terra Nova. He accompanied Scott in January 1912 to within 150 miles of the pole, where he was forced to turn back, leaving Scott and the rest of the ill-fated Southern party to press on towards the Pole. Struck down by scurvy on the return, he was saved only by the devotion of his two companions, Chief Stoker Lashly and Petty Officer Crean. Following his Antarctic service, Evans had a successful naval career, serving as a commander in the First World War – during which he became a popular hero as ‘Evans of the Broke’ for his counter-attack, aboard a ship of that name, against six German destroyers that had bombarded Dover harbour – and, subsequently, as rear-admiral commanding the Royal Australian Navy, then Commander-in-Chief, Africa, before serving in the Second World War in the Norwegian Campaign, finally retiring in 1941.

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