The Franklin Expedition, which began in 1845, was one of the greatest tragedies in polar exploration. Because no one returned alive from this search for the Northwest Passage. Now four of the dead found in the Canadian Arctic have been identified using DNA analysis. This provides new insight into the events that led to the expedition’s tragic end. But most of the expedition members are still missing today, and many bones are unidentified. With the new results, six dead people have now been clearly identified.
The British polar explorer and naval officer John Franklin set out in 1845 with the ships “HMS Erebus” and “HMS Terror” to explore and map the Northwest Passage. This sea route through Arctic North America was intended to shorten the route from Europe to East Asia. But the Franklin expedition ended in disaster. The ships were stuck in the ice for almost two years and the first crew members died. Franklin and 104 of his men then tried to cross the ice back to civilization. But all the men died in the icy wastes of King William Island and the Adelaide Peninsula in the Canadian Arctic.
To date, it is only partially clear why the expedition failed so dramatically. The two ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus were only found at the bottom of Victoria Strait in 2014 and 2016. Some graves and remains of the crew were discovered as early as the 19th century during search expeditions at three different locations on the northwest coast of King William Island. “However, the circumstances of their deaths remain unclear and until recently the identities of none of the dead were known,” said Douglas Stenton of the University of Waterloo in Canada. It was only in 2014 and 2021 that researchers used DNA analyzes to identify two of the dead buried on King William Island: John Gregory, engineer of the HMS Erebus and James Fitzjames, commander of this ship.
Three dead were crew members of HMS Erebus
Now Stenton and his team have managed to identify four more members of the tragic Franklin expedition. To do this, they compared DNA samples from individual teeth and bones from the three sites on King William Island with the genomes of 31 descendants of families of the expedition members who are still alive today. With success: The researchers proved that some of the remains came from the cabin boy of the Erebus, David Young. He had signed on the ship when he was only 17 years old. The second identified dead person is John Bridgens, officer-steward of the Erebus. His skeleton, along with that of the previously identified John Gregory, was found on one of the three dinghies taken by the expedition on the march.
The third newly identified dead person is sailor William Orren, also a member of the Erebus crew. His remains were discovered at the site of a second NgLj-2 dinghy, around 1.7 kilometers from the first. The remains of 13 men were found in this boat, including the ship’s captain, James Fitzjames. Near the boat were bones of five other crew members, William Orren being one of them. “The identification of John Bridgens, David Young and William Orren shows that, like John Gregory, they survived the first three years of the Franklin Expedition and were among the 105 crew members who left the ships in April 1848,” the researchers report.
New insights into the tragic end
The new findings also help to learn more about the events in the spring of 1848, the time after the men abandoned their ships and headed south across the ice. “These new findings narrow down possible explanations for why the NgLj-3 boat was left in Erebus Bay with John Gregory, John Bridgens and another dead person,” Stenton and his team wrote. The fact that these dead belonged to the crew of the Erebus suggests that it was a dinghy of this ship. In addition, the boat was so heavy that it must have been pulled across the ice by a large number of men. However, they may have already been so exhausted that they decided to abandon the boat along with the three sailors who may have already died or were seriously ill.
Unlike this first boat, the remains of the men in the second boat, found about 1.7 kilometers away, show evidence of cannibalism. Stenton and his team suspect that these sailors had also been left behind by other crew members who were still able to sail because of their weakened condition. Some of them survived long enough to eat, out of desperation, the carcasses of those who had recently died before them. “Taken together, all of these results suggest that the two Erebus boats had already become separated from each other before they reached Erebus Bay,” the researchers explain. A third, larger group of expedition members, which was spotted by Inuit on the south coast of King William Island, must also have been isolated from the remaining men beforehand.
First crew member of HMS Terror identified
In a separately published study, Stenton and his team report a fourth newly identified dead person from the Franklin expedition. “This is the only crew member of the HMS Terror identified so far using DNA analysis,” reports Stenton. “His remains were found 130 kilometers away from those of the others.” As the comparative analyzes revealed, these bones come from Harry Peglar, one of the leading sailors on the foretop of the Terror.
“The identification of this sailor is particularly interesting because his remains were found with the few written documents known from this expedition,” explains Stenton. The dead man was carrying personal papers, including his seaman’s license and some notes. However, because his clothing did not correspond to his rank, it remained debatable whether it was really Peglar. The DNA results now confirm this.
Source: University of Waterloo; Specialist article: Journal of Archaeological Science Reports, doi: 10.1016/j.jasrep.2026.105739; Polar Record, doi: 10.1017/S003224742610031X