The 350 artifacts collected in 93 dives made it the most successful excavation period since the discovery of the shipwreck. It was also the first year that the team had been able to link artifacts to specific crew members.

Divers used suits with air hoses and umbilical lines that pumped warm water into the suits from the surface for about three hours, Mr. Harris said. Once they drew near to the vessel, which was about 40-feet deep in near-freezing 35-degree water, they found items that will help researchers reconstruct a narrative of the discipline of the Erebus’s crew, their social life and onboard hierarchies in the months before the ship met its end.

The epaulets, the only item left behind in an officers’ cabin, may have belonged to Third Lt. James Walter Fairholme, the teams said in a statement on Thursday. But what became of him? Do they imply circumstances that called for the abandonment of rank and a reassignment of cabins in a crisis?

“As mortality increased, several people could have occupied them,” Marc-André Bernier, the manager of Parks Canada’s underwater archaeology team, said in an interview, referring to the cabins.

There is a toiletry decanter, discovered on a lower deck, whose contents have still not been identified. Strands from a hairbrush will be subjected to DNA analysis. The brush is of high quality, likely to have been used by an officer. There are coffee beans. A fingerprint has been detected on sealing wax. A stamp possibly belongs to Edmund Hoar, the steward.

The team was puzzled by one discovery in particular: an accordion. “There are always finds that surprise you,” Mr. Bernier said. “Makes sense to have on the ship — part of the entertainment in a long winters’ night.”

As they are brought to the surface, the items will be X-rayed, subjected to diagnostic tests, and cleaned — 72 species of marine life are clinging to the wreckage.