Researchers have identified four additional sailors from Sir John Franklin's ill-fated 1845 Arctic expedition, including one man whose identity had remained the subject of debate for more than a century. Anthropologists from the Faculty of Arts at the University of Waterloo led the research, using DNA recovered from skeletal remains and comparing it with samples provided by living descendants. The four new matches raise the number of Franklin expedition sailors identified through DNA to six.
By April 1848, Franklin's two ships, Erebus and Terror, had been trapped in Arctic ice for nearly two years. The 105 surviving crew members abandoned the vessels and began a desperate attempt to reach safety, traveling along the west coast of King William Island, Nunavut, while hauling boats on sleds. Since the mid-19th century, remains belonging to members of the expedition have been discovered on King William Island and the Adelaide Peninsula.
The latest DNA identifications provide new insight into what happened during the expedition's final stages while also resolving a 166-year-old mystery surrounding one sailor's identity. "Three of the sailors we have identified are from HMS Erebus, and they all died at Erebus Bay. The fourth, the only sailor from the HMS Terror to be definitively identified by DNA analysis, was found 130 kilometers away," said Dr.
Douglas Stenton, Adjunct Professor of anthropology at Waterloo. The sailor found far from the others has now been identified as Harry Peglar, Captain of the Foretop on HMS Terror. His identity had been uncertain since 1859, when a body was discovered carrying Peglar's personal documents.
The clothing found with the remains, however, did not correspond to Peglar's rank, creating a mystery that persisted for generations. "It was interesting to conclusively identify this sailor because the body was found with almost the only written documents from the expedition ever found," said Dr. Robert Park, Professor of anthropology at Waterloo and co-researcher with Stenton.
Those documents became known as the "Peglar Papers." Found alongside Peglar's seaman's certificate, they contain poetry as well as what appear to be descriptions of events that unfolded during the expedition. Three More Members of HMS Erebus Identified The researchers also identified William Orren, Able Seaman; David Young, Boy 1st Class; and John Bridgens, Subordinate Officers' Steward. Their identities confirm that all three survived the expedition's first three years and were among the crew members who ultimately tried to escape the Arctic after abandoning the trapped ships.
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