Few paintings are better known to polar historians than Stephen Pearce's 1851 group portrait of the Arctic Council (Polar Record, 6 (43): 385). The Council consisted of experts consulted by the Admiralty for advice upon the search for Sir John Franklin and the crews of H.M.S. Erebus and Terror, which had been lost among the Canadian arctic islands since 1845. Of the ten persons represented all except one were either naval officers or civilians officially connected with the Navy. The exception was Edward Sabine, Colonel in the Royal Artillery. How did this landsman find his way into such a salty gathering?