Cannibalized Sailor From Doomed 1845 Arctic Expedition Finally Identified

In 1993, the skeletal remains of more than a dozen sailors lost on Sir John Franklin’s doomed 1845 expedition through the Northwest Passage were found scattered along the rocks of a remote island in the Arctic. More than three decades later, one of those men has been identified as Capt. James Fitzjames. Researchers traced his DNA from a bone sample—which reportedly showed telltale signs of cannibalization—to a living relative. Fitzjames is the highest-ranking member of the expedition to be identified, having commanded the second of the expedition’s two ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, which became hopelessly encased in Arctic ice off King William Island more than a year after setting sail. All 129 crew members on the expedition died, and Fitzjames is the second person to have been positively identified using genealogical evidence, after John Gregory, an Erebus engineer, was identified by the same Canadian researchers in 2021.