The Franklin Expedition was dramatized in the television show The Terror.
AMC
Remains recovered from the Royal Navy’s Franklin Expedition have been identified through DNA and genealogical evidence as Captain James FitzJames, the ill-fated officer who also became identified as the first known victim of cannibalism among the expedition’s crew.
In 1845, an expedition led by Sir John Franklin set out with 129 crew members aboard HMS Terror and HMS Erebus to find a navigable Northwest Passage through the Arctic. However, in 1848, the commander of HMS Erebus, Captain James FitzJames, left a report in a stone cairn recording how the survivors decided to abandon ship. Since then, the remains of many unidentified crew members have been found in various locations in the Canadian Arctic.
Researchers are now putting names to some of those remains. “Identifying individuals using molecular techniques often takes time because it requires the involvement of descendants,” he said. Trina Swanston He is a researcher at MacEwan University in Canada but was not involved in the study.
Douglas Stenton Researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada identified FitzJames by comparing the Y chromosome profile of teeth found on Canada’s King William Island with cheek swab tissue from a descendant of FitzJames, who was proven to be genealogically related to FitzJames through the captain’s great-grandfather.
Cut marks on this mandible, now identified as that of James FitzJames, indicate cannibalism.
Anne Keenlyside
The discovery makes Fitzjames the first member of the Franklin Expedition to be identified as a victim of cannibalism. Previous analysis by the late bioarchaeologist Anne Keenlyside Many of the remains found showed signs of being cut, and one of the jawbone now identified as Fitzjames’ had multiple cut marks.
This suggests that some of the last survivors who walked overland ate parts of the bodies of the Fitzjames and some of the other crew members. The discovery “speaks to the desperation of the Franklin’s crew,” Swanston said.
Such research also underscores the importance of the testimony of the indigenous Inuit, she says, who reported seeing about 40 men dragging a ship’s boat on a sled, and were the first to discover bodies with signs of cannibalism.
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