In May 1845, 129 officers and crew under the command of Sir John Franklin set sail from England on two
The polar expedition was destined to be the deadliest in history.
July 9, 1845 John Gregory, ocean engineerexpedition to the Arctic, wrote a letter to his wife Hannah from a stop in Greenland. That was the last time his family heard from him. Along with 128 other scientists, he went missing in 1847. In September 1846, the ships became trapped in the Canadian Arctic off King William Island. Some of the crew died while stuck on the ship. But 105 crew members survived thanks to the ship's supplies and eventually decided to abandon ship, according to a statement from the University of Waterloo.
The remains of a sailor recently found in the northThe Canadas turned out to belong to John Gregory, a member of John Franklin's Arctic expedition. Scientists identified them using the DNA of his descendants. This was reported by the press service of the University of Waterloo with reference to an article in the Polar Record magazine.
After the disaster, archaeologists discovered the remainsdozens of researchers in the area of the expedition. Most of them were on King William Island, along the planned escape route. Although historians know the names of those on board the ships, none of the skeletons have been identified. To date, scientists have managed to extract DNA from 27 members of the expedition.
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