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Archaeologists have identified the cannibalized remains of a high-ranking officer who died during an ill-fated 19th-century Arctic expedition, providing insight into the tragedy of his lost crew and horrible last days.

By comparing DNA from the bones with a sample from a living relative, the new research revealed that the skeletal remains belonged to James Fitzjames, captain of the HMS Erebus. The Royal Navy ship and her sister ship, HMS Terror, were under the command of Sir John Franklin, who led the voyage to explore untraveled areas of the Northwest Passage. The treacherous shortcut across the tip of North America winds through the islands of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago.

In April 1848, exactly three years after the ships left England, the expedition crew abandoned the ships trapped in the ice following the deaths of Franklin and 23 other men. Fitzjames helped 105 survivors on a long retreat; The men pulled boats on sleds across land in the hope of finding safety. However, all men died during the arduous journey, but the exact circumstances of their deaths remain a mystery.

“It went wrong terribly quickly,” said archaeologist Doug Stenton, an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo in Canada, who led the research.

In 1993, another team of researchers found 451 bones believed to belong to at least 13 of Franklin's sailors at a site on King William Island in the Canadian territory of Nunavut. These included the remains identified as Fitzjames in the new study, published September 24 in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

Reports collected from local Inuit in the 1850s indicate that some of the crew engaged in cannibalism. While these reports were initially met with disbelief in England, research conducted over the past four decades found that a significant number of bones bore cut marks, a silent indicator of the expedition's disastrous end.

The identification of Fitzjames' remains makes a tragedy that has long gripped the collective British and Canadian psyche more personal and gives some closure to the families involved, the anthropologist said and historian Claire Warrior, senior content curator at the National Maritime Museum in London, which houses many of the expedition's items. “This is a person who had a life and a family and whose words we have… (and he was) lively, enthusiastic and a joker,” said Warrior, who was not involved in the new study.

DNA analysis and a direct descendant

Researchers discovered Fitzjames' remains in an area now known as Erebus Bay, 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of Victory Point, where the crew came ashore in search of refuge and escape. Circumstances suggest Fitzjames died just weeks after leaving Victory Point and may already have been in poor health, according to the study.

The bones excavated from the site were returned to King William Island in 1994 and interred in a memorial cairn. However, in 2013, Stenton was part of a team that traveled to the island to collect samples of the remains for DNA analysis. The researchers focused primarily on teeth, where fragile DNA is most likely to be preserved.

“We have about 42 archaeological DNA profiles,” said Stenton, a retired director of heritage for the Nunavut Ministry of Culture and Heritage. “As new descendant DNA becomes available, we compare it with the archaeological DNA profiles.”

In early 2024, Stenton's team reached out to Nigel Gambier, who had been identified by a biographer of Fitzjames as a direct descendant.

“I enjoyed helping. The lengths that so many different people went to find out what happened. I find it really fascinating and have a personal interest in what happened,” Gambier, who lives in the east of England, told CNN.

Gambier had long known his distant cousin Fitzjames, who was an experienced officer in the Royal Navy before joining Franklin's expedition. After Gambier sent a swab to Stenton's co-author Stephen Fratpietro, who is technical director at the paleo-DNA lab at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario, the team analyzed DNA from Gambier's Y chromosome, which traces the male lineage . The scientists found that the genetic information matched that of the archaeological sample.

Fitzjames is the second expedition member to be identified through descendant DNA. The first was Erebus' chief engineer John Gregory, whose remains were found at the same site. Stenton and his team linked Gregory's DNA to a living relative in 2021, the study said. However, unlike Fitzjames' remains, Gregory's bones did not show any cut marks suggesting cannibalism.

In Erebus Bay, in addition to Fitzjames, at least three others of the 13 dead crew members documented at the site showed telltale signs of cannibalization.

“I realize how desperate these poor people must have been because they had to eat one of their own dishes,” Gambier said. “How do you know how you would behave? If you are faced with starvation, you may be driven to it.”

The discovery of Fitzjames, a high-ranking officer, as the first identified member of the expedition to be cannibalized showed how the status of the fight for survival declined during the final days of the expedition, Stenton said.

A warrior at the National Maritime Museum agreed: “We now know it was an officer because of the cuts on his jawbone.” I think that's evidence that these were desperate circumstances because the Navy is a real one hierarchical beast.”

Further identification of the remains using DNA could shed some light on the mystery of exactly what transpired, according to Warrior. For example, she said it would be interesting to know whether the remains found belonged to older or younger men, or came from HMS Erebus rather than HMS Terror.

“Is there anything we can surmise that tells us how they might have died?” she said.

The Canadian National Park Service and Inuit communities found the final resting place of HMS Erebus in 2014 and HMS Terror in 2016. The fate of Franklin's lost expedition will likely continue to be a source of fascination, but piecing together the details of what happened will require a lot more information, including about the two shipwrecks.

The doomed expedition has inspired books and dramas such as “The Terror,” a 2018 television series based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Dan Simmons.

“It lives in fantasy as much as it lives in reality,” Warrior said. “Polar regions are extreme and dangerous places where nature can still make us feel small.”