The skeletal remains of the captain of Sir John Franklin’s doomed ship HMS Erebus have been positively identified – and his bones back up claims that other survivors from the ice-bound 1845 expedition fleet had resorted to cannibalism in their desperation to stay alive.
The British explorer Franklin had set out to traverse the last un-navigated sections of the North-west Passage connecting the Atlantic to the Pacific, but his ships Erebus and Terror had been trapped in Arctic ice near King William Island, Nunavut.
Canadian archaeologists discovered the wreck of the Erebus at a depth of 11m in 2014, while HMS Terror was found at 24m two years later. The UK gifted the wrecks to Canada in 2018 and archaeological divers led by Parks Canada continue to explore the sites seasonally, as reported on Divernet (see below)
Captain James Fitzjames’ remains were identified by researchers from the University of Waterloo and Lakehead University in Ontario. They succeeded in matching DNA from his bones with that of a living descendant.
Fitzjames, who was 35 when he died, had joined the Royal Navy at 12 and became a war hero and explorer. Commanding Erebus and responsible for scientific research into magnetism on the expedition, he was unaware that the Admiralty had officially promoted him to the rank of Captain during his final voyage.
When Franklin died in 1847 Fitzjames became second-in-command to Captain Francis Crozier, commander of HMS Terror. Together the two men led the 105 shipwreck survivors overland in a vain bid to reach safety.
European sensibilities
In 1861 Inuit people found human remains along with a ship’s boat – and shocked Victorian sensibilities by claiming that the survivors had resorted to eating one another.
This was confirmed only in 1997, when cut marks found on nearly a quarter of 450 bones at the ‘NgLj-2’ site showed that at least four of the 13 men who had died there had provided a meal for others.
Fitzjames is only the second individual to have been positively identified at the site, following Erebus engineer John Gregory in 2021. “We worked with a good-quality sample that allowed us to generate a Y-chromosome profile, and we were lucky enough to obtain a match,” said Stephen Fratpietro of Lakehead’s Paleo-DNA lab.
The captain’s mandible or lower jaw exhibited multiple cut marks. “This shows that he predeceased at least some of the other sailors who perished, and that neither rank nor status was the governing principle in the final desperate days of the expedition as they strove to save themselves,” said Dr Douglas Stenton, adjunct professor of anthropology at University of Waterloo.
“It demonstrates the level of desperation that the Franklin sailors must have felt to do something they would have considered abhorrent,” commented Waterloo anthropology professor Dr Robert Park. The remains of Fitzjames and those who died with him now rest in a memorial cairn at the site, marked by a commemorative plaque.
Stenton is encouraging other descendants of Franklin expedition crew-members to get in touch, in the hope of identifying further individuals. The team’s latest study, funded by the Nunavut government and University of Waterloo, has just been published in the Journal of Archaeological Science.
Also on Divernet: Divers recover HMS Erebus sailors’ possessions, 275 artefacts recovered from Erebus shipwreck, Divers return to famed Arctic wrecks, Inside HMS Terror 170 years on, More artefacts recovered from HMS Erebus, HMS Terror find could solve 170-year Arctic mystery
