For over two years now, both HMS Terror and HMS Erebus (the personification of death in Greek mythology) remained encased in ice near the top of the world. Amid frigid Arctic conditions, dwindling rations, and no hope in sight, the surviving crew of Sir John Franklin’s ill-fated 1845 expedition to chart a Northwest Passage to China finally abandoned their two ships on April 26, 1848. However improbably the men hoped to make a last-ditch effort to escape across the frozen ice and tundra.
Their last months lived up to the names of both ships. No one on board either Terror or Erebus eventually made it out alive, and many are believed to have died around King William Island in Nunavut, Canada’s largest and most remote territory. Ultimately, evidence even shows that the last few sailors eventually resorted to cannibalism – and new analysis proves that they did this regardless of respect for a superior’s rank.
Franklin’s expedition left Kent, England, on May 19, 1845, hoping to finally chart a northwest route around the world to Asia. By the time the crew left their ships in 1848, Franklin had been dead for almost a year, so the 105 survivors turned to a high-ranking officer, Commander James Fitzjames, to lead their deadly, futile march.
As early as the 1850s, search parties told stories from indigenous Inuit communities of seeing survivors engaging in cannibalism—a claim that shocked search parties given its cultural taboo. Subsequent trips to the region have since found skeletal fragments belonging to dozens of crew members’ bodies. In particular, an archaeological site on King William Island has yielded 451 bones of at least 13 sailors. In 1997, archaeologists discovered Traces have been removed from nearly a quarter of those remains, ultimately providing forensic evidence of cannibalism. But since then, only one sample has been linked to a crew member using DNA and genealogical evidence: John Gregoryan engineer from the Erebus.
According to a report published on September 24 in the Journal of Archaeologyresearchers from the University of Waterloo and Lakehead University have identified another survivor who made it to King William Island: Commander Fitzjames himself.
“We worked with a good quality sample that allowed us to generate a Y chromosome profile, and we were fortunate to obtain a match (from the DNA of the offspring),” says Stephen Fratpietro, researcher at the Paleo-DNA Laboratory of Lakehead University and research co-author, said in a associated announcement on Tuesday.
Although Fitzjames survived longer than many of his crew, he was not the last to die. And those who remained behind, despondent and starving, apparently did not let his remains go to waste. Analysis of Fitzjames’ lower jaw bone showed clear signs of deliberate cuts with a sharp-edged tool – telltale evidence of cannibalism.
(Related: Human flesh is not very nutritious.)
“This shows… that neither rank nor status was the guiding principle in the expedition’s last desperate days as they strove to save themselves,” added Douglas Stenton, another co-author of the study and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo.
Archaeologists’ latest finds further confirm that the fate of Franklin’s attempted expedition is somehow bleaker than the previous one Historical horror novel from 2007 by Dan Simmons that inspired it. It’s even grimmer then AMC’s 2018 miniseries adaptation from the same book, as (spoiler alert) none of the 129 officers or crew ultimately survived the multi-year ordeal.
Still, Stenton added that his team was “extremely grateful to this family for sharing their history with us and providing DNA samples.” He also encouraged other known descendants of the Franklin expedition to see if their own DNA could help identify other remains at the ill-fated crew members’ last expedition stop – a spot less than 50 miles from their abandoned ships.