DNA Identifies Four More Sailors From the Doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition

Researchers led by anthropologists at the University of Waterloo have identified four more members of Sir John Franklin's 1845 expedition to find the Northwest Passage, raising the total number of confirmed Franklin expedition sailors identified by DNA to six. The team analyzed DNA from skeletal remains and matched it with DNA from living descendants.

In April 1848, after the expedition ships Erebus and Terror had been trapped in Arctic ice for almost two years, 105 surviving crew members tried to escape on foot along King William Island, Nunavut, dragging boats on sleds. None survived, and remains linked to the expedition have been found on King William Island and the Adelaide Peninsula since the mid-19th century.

Three of the newly identified sailors, William Orren, David Young and John Bridgens, were from HMS Erebus and died at Erebus Bay. The fourth, Harry Peglar, is the only HMS Terror crew member identified by DNA so far and was found 130 kilometers away. His identification resolves a mystery dating to 1859, when a body was found carrying his personal papers, including poetry, but dressed in clothing that did not match his rank.

The new identifications build on earlier work by the same team, which identified John Gregory in 2021 and James Fitzjames, captain of the Erebus, in 2024. Unlike Fitzjames's remains, the four newly identified sailors showed no evidence of cannibalism. Study coauthor Stephen Fratpietro of Lakehead University extracted DNA from the archaeological samples and compared it with descendants' mitochondrial and Y-chromosome DNA, finding a genetic distance of zero in each case, evidence the individuals shared a common ancestor.