illuminator newsletter #35
Bombshell: Fitzjames found.
“Thus, on the basis of this Y-chromosome analysis we conclude that mandible NgLj-2:226 is that of James Fitzjames, Captain of the Erebus.”
— Identification of a senior officer from Sir John Franklin’s Northwest Passage expedition. By Stenton, Fratpietro, & Park.
24 September 2024.
New Doug Stenton paper: Remains of Captain James Fitzjames identified by DNA match.
Jawbone recovered in 1992 at site “NgLj-2” – the 2nd/hidden Boat Place on King William Island.
First identified victim of cannibalism from the expedition is one of the three captains.
Modern descendant for DNA match located by Fitzjames researcher Fabiënne Tetteroo (author of JamesFitzjames.com).
Full paper out today by Stenton’s team from the Journal of Archaeological Science (PDF download available):
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2024.104748
This site “NgLj-2” was the 2nd boat that stayed hidden beneath the snow, when the famous “Boat Place” was found by Hobson/McClintock in 1859. Inuit following up on McClintock’s trail located the 2nd boat, and reported finding many more bodies and also books. Ontario art teacher Barry Ranford relocated the site in 1992. This led to its archaeological examination by Keenleyside & Bertulli, which became the first to find significant physical evidence supporting Inuit reports of cannibalism (oddly, no similar evidence of cannibalism was found at the 1st Boat Place site, known as NgLj-3).
This is only the 2nd DNA identification of remains from the Franklin Expedition. The first in 2021 – made by Doug Stenton’s same archaeological team – identified the Erebus’ engineer John Gregory at NgLj-3. In my talk in Bath earlier this year, I digressed on the question of why such an important specialist would have died dragging a boat on land, seemingly isolated, one of the only people who could operate the steam engine for the propeller. Given that logic, I should have taken the opportunity to speculate that: where the ship’s engineer died, senior officers are likely be found. A similar speculation is now in sight: where a captain died, other senior officers are still likely to be found.
Fitzjames researcher Fabiënne Tetteroo had missed my talk in Bath by a day, and so I met her in London the following week. Over drinks at St Pancras station, she outlined to me her plan to track down a Fitzjames DNA match candidate. I can hardly believe it has come to fruition so quickly.
James Fitzjames was the most vivid writer on the expedition. The tragedy contained in today’s news is that, as the Inuit reported seeing many books at the 2nd boat place, it is unlikely that Fitzjames’ journal will now be found on the shipwreck of HMS Erebus. It presumably disintegrated with him at Erebus Bay, just out of sight of McClintock’s search parties in 1859, maddeningly hiding under the snow less than a mile from where they camped.
The University of Waterloo, co-sponsor of Doug Stenton’s research, has issued a press release (which also contains a 3D diagram of the Fitzjames jawbone that is not available in the journal article):
https://uwaterloo.ca/news/media/another-franklin-expedition-crew-member-has-been-identified
Major news outlets are already picking up the story, led by Bob Weber at The Canadian Press (Globe & Mail, Toronto Sun) — although the line “At the time of his death, Fitzjames had a wife and two children” is inaccurate (thanks to Alison Freebairn for flagging this).
Since the last issue.
Dive season 2024: Parks Canada’s RV David Thompson returned to Gjoa Haven from the wreck sites a week ago on September 17th, for an archaeology season lasting just over two weeks in length. The next issue of this newsletter will likely go out when Parks Canada publishes a summary of the season’s findings.
6 September 2024.
Parks Canada Nunavut’s Facebook account has released much higher resolution photography of the five 2022 Erebus artifacts that debuted in August. In particular, this is the first time it is possible to see some of the details on the Pantry folio’s embossed cover.
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/SNzDi8Y69caKPx7G/
12 September 2024.
British sailor or Inuk? A reappraisal of the ancestry of human skeletal remains found in 1949 by Henry Larsen, Cape Felix, King William Island. By Douglas Stenton.
Douglas Stenton has also recently released a new paper in Polar Record re-examining the presumed Franklin Expedition remains found near the Cape Felix campsite. In demonstrating that these remains are more likely of an adult Inuk male, Stenton observes that this removes the one example where Franklin Expedition remains were thought to have been found between Cape Felix and Victory Point.
16 September 2024.
The Peglar Papers (The Unofficial Visual Transcription). By Isabel Clare Paul.
Since the Victory Point Record was discovered, the faded and sometimes obscured handwriting has been made readable with the assistance of facsimiles. So many VPR facsimiles have been created that I did a project a few years ago sorting out which were originals and which were merely descended from previous facsimiles. But another, much lengthier, much more difficult to read tranche of Franklin Expedition writing was also discovered in that same year of 1859. And yet, in the 165 years since, the Peglar Papers have never benefitted from a readable facsimile. Debuting this September, after 10 months of work, illustrator Isabel Clare Paul of Michigan has created the first legible facsimiles of the Peglar Papers.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1qtggsgqT2o6yPQMsAHCtQsvJEQxSRZJE
For reference, low resolution imagery of the originals at Greenwich can be viewed on the RMG website:
https://www.rmg.co.uk/collections/objects/rmgc-object-2113
[A warning to anyone new to this topic: besides the difficulty of reading Victorian handwriting, much of the Peglar Papers are written backwards and phonetically.]
16 July 2024.
Parks Canada Nunavut has released photographs of the Nattilik Heritage Centre’s new expansion under construction in Gjoa Haven, a portion of which is being built to “showcase artifacts from the wrecks of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror.”