The Franklin Expedition

Summary

In May 1845 Sir John Franklin sailed from England with 129 men in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to find a Northwest Passage. None came back, and a note found in 1859 recorded that the ships had been abandoned in April 1848, with Franklin already dead.

The outline of what followed is settled. The crews set out on foot along King William Island and all died, of cold, hunger and disease; at the end some resorted to cannibalism, as Inuit told the explorer John Rae in 1854 and as cut marks on bones have since confirmed. Both ships were found in the 2010s, where Inuit testimony had placed them.

What is not settled is why so many had died before the ships were abandoned, how the ships came to lie so far south of where they were left, and what the last survivors did. Six of the 129 have now been identified by DNA, four of them in 2026.

What is documented

The expedition. The ships left Greenhithe on the Thames on 19 May 1845 with 134 men. Five were sent home from Greenland, and 129 went on. Franklin commanded from Erebus, whose captain was Commander James Fitzjames; Captain Francis Crozier commanded Terror. The crews of two whalers saw the ships in Baffin Bay in late July 1845, waiting to cross to Lancaster Sound. No European saw them again.

The first winter. The ships went up Wellington Channel, came back down the west side of Cornwallis Island, and wintered in 1845 to 1846 at Beechey Island. Three men died there and were buried: John Torrington on 1 January 1846, John Hartnell on 4 January and William Braine on 3 April. Searchers found their graves in 1850.

The note. In May 1859 Lieutenant William Hobson, of an expedition led by Francis Leopold McClintock and privately funded by Franklin's widow, Jane, found a record in a cairn near Victory Point on the north-west coast of King William Island. It is a printed Admiralty form, now at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, carrying two handwritten messages.

• The first, dated 28 May 1847 and signed by Lieutenant Graham Gore and Mate Charles Des Voeux, says the ships had wintered in the ice at 70°05' N, 98°23' W, and ends "All well". It wrongly gives the winter at Beechey Island as 1846 to 1847.
• The second, written round the margin on 25 April 1848 and signed by Crozier and Fitzjames, says the ships were deserted on 22 April, 5 leagues north-north-west of the cairn, "having been beset since 12th September, 1846". It records that 105 men had landed under Crozier, that "Sir John Franklin died on the 11th June, 1847", and that the deaths so far were "9 officers and 15 men". They would start the next day "for Back's Fish River".

The note is the only known record of the plan to walk south to the Back River. Twenty-four deaths in under three years, nine of them officers, is the first unexplained fact in the case. The surgeons' sick books, which would have recorded the illnesses aboard, have never been found, and where Franklin was buried is not known.

Rae and the Inuit. In April 1854 John Rae, surveying for the Hudson's Bay Company, met Inuit at Pelly Bay who had items from the expedition; he bought some, including a silver plate engraved with Franklin's name. They told him of about forty white men seen travelling south over the ice dragging a boat, and of some thirty bodies found later on the mainland and five on an island north-west of the Back River. Rae reported to the Admiralty that the state of the bodies and the contents of their kettles showed the men had been driven to "the last dread alternative". The Times published his report on 23 October 1854. Charles Dickens answered it in Household Words in "The Lost Arctic Voyagers", beginning on 2 December 1854, rejecting the Inuit testimony.

McClintock's other finds. Besides the note, McClintock's parties found a ship's boat at Erebus Bay with two skeletons in it, and on the south shore of King William Island, about 5 kilometres south-east of Gladman Point, a skeleton lying with papers bearing the name of Harry Peglar, captain of the foretop in Terror. The clothing was a steward's, not a seaman's, and who the man was stayed disputed for 167 years.

The testimony gathered later. The American Charles Francis Hall collected Inuit accounts in the 1860s. They included a ship crushed by ice and sunk, and a second ship found in good order at Utjulik, on the north-west coast of the Adelaide Peninsula, with a dead man aboard; when the Inuit returned it had sunk with its masts showing. In 1991 the researcher David Woodman published a compilation of the testimony, and the Gjoa Haven historian Louie Kamookak spent decades gathering accounts from elders.

The graves opened. In 1984 a team led by the anthropologist Owen Beattie exhumed Torrington. His lungs showed scarring from earlier tuberculosis and signs of recent pneumonia, which the team concluded killed him; his hair and nails held high levels of lead. In 1991 Walter Kowal, Beattie and colleagues reported lead levels in the expedition's remains consistent with lead intoxication, and lead isotope ratios matching the solder of the expedition's food tins. In 1997 Anne Keenleyside and colleagues reported on nearly 400 bones from at least eleven men at a site on King William Island found in 1992: elevated lead, and cut marks on about a quarter of the remains, supporting the Inuit accounts.

The lead question reopened. Three later studies weighed against lead as the decisive cause. In 2016 Keith Millar and colleagues analysed 1,480 cases in the sick books of the naval squadrons sent to search for Franklin, which met similar conditions. They found no clear evidence of lead poisoning despite high exposure, and no grounds to think scurvy significant by the time the ships were abandoned, and proposed that the high toll among Franklin's officers owed more to accidents and injuries. In 2017 Jennie Christensen and colleagues found that Hartnell's lead exposure fell over the course of the voyage and stayed within a normal range, rising in his nails only in his last weeks as lead stored in his bones was released, and that he was severely deficient in zinc. In 2018 Treena Swanston and colleagues imaged lead in bone microstructure and found the crew's exposure similar to that of contemporary Royal Navy personnel from Antigua; their data, they wrote, did not support lead having played "a pivotal role".

The wrecks. On 1 September 2014 Government of Nunavut archaeologists found a davit pintle from a ship, stamped with the British government's broad arrow mark, on a small island. The next day Parks Canada's underwater archaeologists found Erebus by sonar in Wilmot and Crampton Bay, west of the Adelaide Peninsula, in about 11 metres of water; the ship's bell, marked with the broad arrow and the date 1845, confirmed her identity. On 3 September 2016 the Arctic Research Foundation's vessel Martin Bergmann found Terror in Terror Bay, on the south-west coast of King William Island, in about 24 metres. The search there followed a tip from Sammy Kogvik of Gjoa Haven, who remembered a large piece of wood sticking up through the ice on a hunting trip. Parks Canada confirmed the wreck on 18 September. Terror is largely intact, with some hatches and windows closed and glass still in place. Both wrecks lie far to the south of where the note says the ships were deserted. The site is jointly managed by Parks Canada and Inuit.

The identifications. Since 2013 Douglas Stenton, Robert Park and Stephen Fratpietro have compared DNA from the remains with samples from descendants of the crew.

• 2021: John Gregory, engineer of Erebus, from remains at Erebus Bay.
• 2024: Captain James Fitzjames of Erebus, from a tooth in a jaw found at Erebus Bay. The jaw bore cut marks consistent with the Inuit account of cannibalism.
• May 2026: three more men of Erebus from three sites at Erebus Bay: William Orren, able seaman; David Young, boy first class; and John Bridgens, subordinate officers' steward. The same team identified the 1859 skeleton near Gladman Point as Harry Peglar after all, with no match to the descendants of six of the expedition's eight stewards.

Leading explanations

Cold, starvation and disease on the march (the established outline; the weight of each cause is contested). The note, the distribution of remains along the south-west coast of King William Island and the Adelaide Peninsula, and the Inuit testimony all describe men dying in stages as they travelled south, with cannibalism among the last of them. What remains open is what killed the 24 before April 1848, and how weak the 105 already were when they set out.

Lead poisoning from the tinned food (proposed by Beattie and colleagues in the 1980s; now contested). The high lead levels are real, and the isotope match to the tins' solder was published in 1991. The later studies found exposure typical of the Royal Navy of the time, falling rather than rising during the voyage in the one man whose nails were tested, and without clear clinical effect in comparable crews. The current weight of evidence makes lead a possible contributor, not the explanation.

Scurvy, tuberculosis and poor nutrition (contributors, supported in part; not established as decisive). Torrington had tuberculosis scarring and pneumonia, and Hartnell a severe zinc deficiency, which can suppress immunity. Millar and colleagues found scurvy common in the search crews and concluded that the way the lemon juice was prepared, for them and for Franklin's ships, would have weakened it, but found no grounds to think scurvy significant by April 1848.

The ships were re-manned after April 1848 (David Woodman's hypothesis; supported by circumstantial evidence, not established). Woodman argues that the desertion was temporary, and that some men returned to the ships, citing the positions of the wrecks, the Inuit account of a ship in good order at Utjulik with a dead man aboard, and the fact that Terror was found with her propeller in place. It has not been shown how either ship reached the place where she sank.

Current status

Partially explained. Where the expedition went, when the ships were abandoned, how many set out and that all died is established by the expedition's own note, the remains and Inuit testimony. So is the fact that some turned to cannibalism at the end. What is not established is why 24 men, nine of them officers, were dead before April 1848, how the ships came to lie where they were found, and how and when the last survivors died. The questions most likely to be answered next are on the seabed: papers preserved in Erebus or Terror would change the record, as would further DNA identifications, which are continuing.

Last reviewed: September 2026. Records are provisional. Where the evidence changes, the entry changes. Found an error? Tell us.