'It went horribly wrong': DNA analysis sheds light on lost Arctic expedition's grisly end

Archaeologists have identified the cannibalized remains of a senior officer who perished during an ill-fated 19th-century Arctic expedition, offering insight into its lost crew’s tragic and grisly final days.

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

A different team of researchers in 1993 found 451 bones thought to belong to at least 13 of Franklin’s sailors at a site on King William Island in Canada’s Nunavut territory. The remains identified as Fitzjames’ in the new study, published September 24 in the Journal of Archaeological Science were among them.

Accounts gathered from local Inuit people in the 1850s suggested that some of the crew members resorted to cannibalism. While these reports were initially met with disbelief in England, subsequent investigations conducted over the past four decades found a significant number of bones had cut marks that offered silent evidence of the expedition’s catastrophic end.