Remains of Additional Sailors from Doomed Franklin Expedition Identified

ONTARIO, CANADA—The remains of another four sailors from the Franklin Expedition have been identified through DNA matches with living descendants, according to a Live Science report. Led by Sir John Franklin, the expedition left England in 1845 on two ships to travel the Canadian Arctic and look for a route to connect the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. All 129 men were lost by 1848. William Oren, a seaman; David Young, a boy first class; and John Bridgens, a subordinate officer’s steward, all sailed on HMS Erebus and died at Erebus Bay. The fourth man, Harry Peglar, was Captain of the Foretop on HMS Terror. His body was found about 125 miles from where the icebound ships had been abandoned, indicating that he had traveled a long way before he died alone. Papers belonging to Peglar were found on another man’s body in 1859. “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 Douglas Stenton of the University of Waterloo. Read the original scholarly articles about this research in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports and Polar Record. To read more about the process of identifying victims of the Franklin Expedition, go to "Grim Evidence from the Arctic," one of ARCHAEOLOGY's Top 10 Discoveries of 2024.