Researchers Identify Four Sailors from Doomed 1845 Franklin Expedition

Researchers have identified four sailors among the 129 who died on the 1845 Franklin Expedition, settling a decades-old debate over one man's identity.

The HMS Erebus and HMS Terror set out from England in 1845 under Captain Sir John Franklin to chart a passage around the top of North America. The ships became trapped in Arctic ice for nearly two years. In April 1848, the men tried to escape, but all perished in what London's Royal Museums Greenwich calls the worst disaster in British polar exploration history. Details of their last days are unclear. The wrecks now lie off Canada's coast.

Anthropologists from the University of Waterloo's Faculty of Arts and Lakehead University extracted DNA from archaeological samples linked to the expedition. They compared it to DNA from living descendants of the crew, according to a University of Waterloo news release.

The analysis identified three sailors from the HMS Erebus: able seaman William Orren, Boy 1st Class David Young, and subordinate officers' steward John Bridgens. Forensic facial reconstruction depicts what Young looked like at death. Further details on their identifications and what their remains suggest about their deaths appear in the Journal of Archaeological Science.

The fourth sailor served on the HMS Terror. His remains turned up about 80 miles from the Erebus crew's, the university said. DNA confirmed them as Harry Peglar, captain of the foretop.

Peglar's identity had puzzled experts since 1859, when researchers found remains with his personal papers—certification, poetry, and apparent expedition accounts—but dressed in a steward's clothes, not matching his rank. The mismatch fueled decades of debate.

New tests matched the remains to a close genetic relative of Peglar's and ruled out several known stewards. "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 the University of Waterloo and a project leader. Peglar's are the only identified remains from the HMS Terror.

Questions persist, as noted in a Polar Record paper. Researchers cannot explain why Peglar wore a steward's uniform despite ample spare clothing, whether due to demotion or another reason. Nor is it clear why his body lay alone, far from others.

Six of the 129 dead sailors are now identified. In 2021, remains matched Erebus engineer John Gregory. In 2024, they confirmed Erebus captain James Fitzjames, whose bones showed cannibalism signs. No such evidence marked the new finds.

The discoveries shed light on the expedition's end. The University of Waterloo urges other crew descendants to donate DNA for more identifications.

"For the living descendants, these findings provide previously unavailable details regarding the circumstances and locations of their relatives' deaths, as well as the identities of some of the shipmates who died with them," said Dr. Douglas Stenton, adjunct assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Waterloo and a project leader.