Cannibalized Remains of HMS Terror’s First Officer Identified

The story of the ships HMS Terror and HMS Erebus, and the doom that awaited them in Canada’s frozen north, is among the most harrowing in history. The two ships, and the men who sailed in them, met with tragedy on the Franklin expedition trying to find a navigable Arctic route to the Pacific, and open up the world to trade.

For decades a route through the fabled “northwest passage” had attracted ambitious privateers funded by merchant ventures, seeking a way through the ice to the Bering Strait and the trade opportunities with Asia that lay beyond. This was what attracted the two English ships to brave the unknown in 1845.

The 129 men under Sir John Franklin would become trapped in the ice, and in desperation the 105 men under the company’s first office, James Fitzjames, attempted to escape overland. None survived, but according to an article published in the Journal of Archaeological Science we at least know what happened to Fitzjames.

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And it isn’t pretty. The men, driven to extremes from the extremes of the Canadian wilderness, resorted to cannibalism in their desperation. Tales are told of the discovery of remains by searchers years later, and the horrific contents of the kettles found on their campfires, frozen and abandoned, surrounded by the dead.

DNA evidence has confirmed that one of the skeletons of the men was Fitzjames, and the knife marks on his jawbone leave little room for doubt: his body appeared to have been cut up and prepared as he was made into a stew.

Header Image: We now know what happened to James Fitzjames, first officer of the doomed Frankling Expedition of 1845. Source: Richard Beard / Public Domain.

Written by Allthathistory