A novel set of portraits from the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition to Canada's Northwest Passage is to be auctioned for an estimated six-figure sum.

The 14 photos, referred to as daguerreotypes - coined from the primary profitable type of images - are of explorers who sailed with Captain Sir John Franklin however by no means made it dwelling.

They symbolize the primary and final time the lads had their images taken on British ship HMS Erebus, three days earlier than the expedition launched.

The set are to go beneath the hammer at Sotheby's public sale home appraised between £150,000 to £200,000.

Sir Franklin and his crew of 128, on board the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, had been looking for the passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific oceans once they turned caught in ice.

The males all died and the ships mysteriously vanished, with tales amongst Inuit individuals describing the crew's descent into cannibalism.

The assortment owned by Franklin's direct descendants has by no means been exhibited in public.

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The gallery, together with Franklin himself, additionally options Robert Sargent and the one officer from the HMS Terror, Francis Crozier who commanded the ship - two extra images than the one different unique assortment of the portraits identified to exist housed within the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI).

All however one of many Sotheby's portraits have been adorned with gold shell which have been utilized to the buttons, hat bands, and epaulettes of the officers' jackets.

They additionally match snugly in a case additionally believed to be an unique.

In September 2014, explorers found the wreck of HMS Erebus.

Artefacts together with weapons, a part of the wheel, fittings from the ship, dinner plates and clothes had been recovered.

Fellow sunken vessel HMS Terror was discovered two years later in reportedly good situation.