The reward was rich; a kind of victory, power, and the promise of great profits that encourages risk-taking. When the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror left Britain on 19 May 1845 with a crew of 128 sailors and officers under the command of Sir John Franklin, their aim was to explore and map the Northwest Passage, a shortcut between the Atlantic and the Pacific Ocean. Pacific from Canadian Arctic. A priori everything was in his favor. Sir Franklin was a senior officer and the two ships under his command were sturdy warships that few had previously taken on Ross’s successful expedition to Antarctica.

Neither one nor the other was of much use to the British team, known today as “Franklin’s lost expedition.” It is true that his 129 men went down in history; but as heroes of one of the greatest tragedies of Arctic exploration. After decades of mystery and occasional discoveries, we have now been able to unravel part of the story of one of the highest-ranking military officers, James Fitzjames. And spoiler: The outcome is as tragic as one might think. Even more.

An expedition, a riddle. The Franklin expedition is fascinating. And mysterious. One helps the other. We know that he set out from Great Britain on May 19, 1845, that he had two iconic ships named HMS Erebus and Terror, and that he had 129 sailors and officers. We know that the ships were well equipped with steam engines, fresh water, livestock, equipment to produce food for three years, and even a system to keep the crew warm.

We know they sailed across the North Atlantic to Nunavut in the Canadian Arctic. We also know that a few months later, at the end of July, two British whalers spotted them in Baffin Bay. From there, mystery. A deep, disturbing and icy mystery. Ships and crew disappeared.

clearing the mystery. At least 36 expeditions were launched to search for Erebus and the Terror between 1847 and 1859, guided largely by Franklin’s relatives and the rest of the crew. Without success. What they found were disturbing stories from Inuit on King William Island in Nunavut. Or more than disturbing, disturbing. Locals claimed to have found clear evidence that the survivors were eating each other.

This did not sit well with Victorian England, which viewed with disbelief the stories of at least some of its civilized sailors devouring each other on the Arctic ice plains.

“Our unfortunate citizens”. Particularly striking is the account of John Rae, a Scottish surgeon and explorer who, around 1854, heard stories from Inuit in Boothia Bay about the unfortunate end of part of Franklin’s expedition. These were not direct witness accounts, but stories spread by word of mouth among the natives, but they were clear.

“Some of the bodies were buried. Some were in one or more tents. Others were under the capsized boat to create shelter. Others were scattered in various directions. Many of the bodies were dismembered, and the contents of the kettles were subjected to cannibalism, a last resort for our unfortunate compatriots as a way of prolonging their existence.” It is clear that they were dragged.” John Rae stated in his report.

In a letter sent TimesThe Scotsman even spoke of “sadly mutilated and stripped corpses”. There were those, like Charles Dickens, who thought that these stories of Englishmen eating Englishmen might just be hoaxes, and that if they showed anything, it was a lack of trust on the part of the Inuit peoples.

Victory Point note. As time passed, one thing became clear: Despite his officers’ experience that the Erebus and the Terror were two first-class ships and that all the food was on board, Sir Franklin’s expedition had gone dramatically awry. When, how, why? Nobody knew. But although successive search expeditions failed to find the ships, they did find artifacts, human remains and, best of all, a paper called the “Victory Point Note” found in a stone tomb on King William Island in 1859.

The document was dated 25 April 1848 and states: britannicaIt had been prepared by senior civil servants Francis Crozier and James Fitzjames. The first was captain of HMS Terror. Fitzjames served as second-in-command of the Erebus, which Franklin himself commanded, when it left Great Britain in 1845.

24 dead, 105 survivors. The article is very important because it helps us understand the fate of the people of Franklin. In summary, the expedition spent the winter of 1845-1846 on Beechey Island, sailed through Peel Sound in the summer, and eventually their ship was stranded off King William Island, where the crew was condemned to spend the winters of 1846-1847 and 1847. -1848.

“The ships were abandoned on the 22nd of April, having been harassed five leagues northwest from here since the 12th of September, 1846. Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June, 1847, and the total loss of life so far on the expedition was nine officers and Fitzjames, the last written record preserved from the expedition. “15 men,” he said in a handwritten note with a message.

Portrait of Captain James Fitzjames.

In search of salvation. What happened next? One more clue remains in the note: “Tomorrow, the 26th, we will set out for Backs Fish River.” So, after abandoning their boat, the 105 survivors decided to head up the Back River, a nearly 400-kilometer journey around King William Island, pulling sleds and hoping to reach safety. They were not lucky. Thanks to the Inuit, a handful of these men, aged between 35 and 40, are known to have died near the mouth of the river.

In the early 1990s, a research team found 451 bones believed to belong to at least 13 of the expedition’s sailors in the Nunavut region. In total, since the mid-19th century, the remains of dozens of the 105 expedition members who managed to survive Sir Franklin and abandon ships trapped in the ice lie around the island.

Fertile space for theories. Were there any other factors working against you, other than the extreme cold? Can we learn more about his last days? Different theories have been considered for years: scurvy, botulism, lead poisoning, hypothermia… It has even been suggested that at least some of the men may have suffered from trichinosis after eating undercooked polar bear meat. All this is against the backdrop of Inuit stories of cannibalism among survivors.

The (tragic) end of Captain Fitzjames. Almost 18 years after the expedition set sail from the coast of England, we finally learn the fate of one of the expedition’s great heroes, Captain James Fitzjames; the same man, thanks to his notes, gave us a better understanding of the expedition. chronicle of the expedition.

And, probably to Dickens’s discomfort, what we find clearly points to a tale of desperation, tragedy and cannibalism. First, we now know that he died before the other members of the crew. Secondly, in the middle of the Arctic, in extreme conditions and with little or no food to put in their mouths, everything points to the survivors cannibalizing their remains.

So how do we know? Thanks to a recent study developed by researchers from the University of Waterloo and Lakehead, they have three incredible tools to help unravel Fitzjames’ story. The first is a bone found among 451 remains found at the site on King William Island. Second, DNA analysis and genealogy. The third is a DNA sample from a living descendant of furniture salesman Fitzjames.

as required New York TimesHe is a very distant descendant, his great-great-great-nephew, but his relationship with Fitzjames was confirmed by a Dutch expert working on the captain’s biography. Experts, with the help of the second and third, confirmed that the first bone found on King William Island was part of the skeleton of the unfortunate captain. The analysis was made possible largely because the remains are particularly interesting. It is a jaw that still retains several teeth.

The identity of the second survivor has been revealed. “We worked with a good quality sample that allowed us to profile the Y chromosome, and we were lucky to get a match,” says Stephen Fratpietro of the Lakehead Paleo-DNA Laboratory. Actually, this is not the first time this has happened. In 2021, researchers had already resorted to a simulation strategy to identify another of the 105 people who abandoned ships trapped by ice in 1848. On this occasion, John Gregory, chief engineer of HMS Erebus, was located.

And the surprise came. But there is a significant difference between the analyzed remains of John Gregory and James Fitzjames. Investigators found cut marks on the Erebus captain’s chin. This tells experts a story of tragedy, horror and despair: “This suggests that after his death, his body was the victim of cannibalism,” explains Waterloo.

Professor Dr. Douglas Stenton adds: “This suggests that he died before at least some of the other sailors, and that neither rank nor status was the guiding principle as they fought to save themselves in the last desperate days of the expedition.” university anthropology.

Not likely. For 19th-century Europeans, cannibalism was reprehensible. It didn’t matter how extreme the context or the situation was. Thus, for many Britons, the idea that sailors under Franklin’s command might have been involved in an act of cannibalism was unthinkable.

Charles Dickens wrote in his diary at the time: “It is extremely unlikely that such men as the officers and crew of the two sunken ships, in conditions of extreme starvation, would wish or be able to relieve the pain of hunger by these terrible methods.” In an attempt to undisguisedly show that the stories shared by the Inuit are at least “unreliable”.

Is this a surprise? No. And not just because of the testimonies of indigenous communities. In the 90s, Dr. Anne Keenleyside found cut marks on almost a quarter of the human bones found at the site; This suggests that, as the University of Waterloo recalls, “the bodies of at least four of the men who died there were covered in bones” that “were victims of cannibalism”.

Today Inuit accounts are considered fully authenticated. The new study was published on: Journal of Archaeological Science: ReportsIt helps us better understand the outcome of Franklin’s expedition and, above all, the fate of Captain Fitzjames, one of the most relevant figures in that episode, both in terms of the hierarchical rank he held and the relevance of his handwritten notes.

A less mysterious riddle. Although significant, analysis of Fitzjames’ jaw is not the first clue that will help us better understand what happened to Franklin’s crew. The most relevant discoveries have actually come over the past decade regarding the location of HMS Erebus and Terror in Arctic waters.

The first was detected in September 2014 with the help of a remotely operated diver. The second came two years later, when the Terror ship wreck was found about 100 km from Erebus. The hatch covers were closed, indicating that the crew was preparing the ship for the harsh conditions of winter.

There are still unknowns to be solved. That’s why the team that identified Fitzjames has made an important request: They encourage the descendants of the crew members to contact them and share a DNA sample, which is the key to continuing to identify the heroes of one of the most fascinating, mysterious and mysterious events. terrible episodes of sea exploration.

Pictures | Wikipedia 1, 2, 3 and University of Waterloo

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