Scientists have extracted DNA from the skeletal remains of several 19th-century sailors from the ill-fated Franklin Expedition, whose goal was to navigate the fabled Northwest Passage.

With a new genetic database of 24 expedition members, researchers hope to identify some of the victims of one of the worst disasters in the history of polar exploration.

Led by Sir John Franklin, a British Royal Navy captain, the 129-member crew embarked in 1845 in search of a sea route that would link the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. The sailors were doomed after their two ships became trapped in sea ice in the Canadian Arctic Archipelago in 1846.

The last communication, a short note from April 25, 1848, indicated that the surviving men were abandoning the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — just off King William Island and starting a harsh journey south toward a trading post on the mainland. None of them seems to have made it even a fifth of the way there.

Over more than a century, search parties and scientists have discovered the remains of several Franklin sailors in boats and makeshift campsites scattered along this route. The bones bear scars of diseases including scurvy. Some have signs of cannibalism, according to a recent study that confirmed 19th-century reports of Inuit witnesses describing piles of fractured human bones. Several artifacts from the Erebus, including a medicine bottle and tunic buttons, as well as the ship’s bronze bell, have also been uncovered.

In the latest look at the array of bones, a team led by Douglas Stenton of the Department of Culture and Heritage for Nunavut (a territory in northern Canada) conducted genetic tests on the remains.

Stenton and his colleagues obtained DNA from 37 bone and tooth samples found at eight sites around King William Island, and they established that the remains had come from at least 24 members of the expedition.

The researchers say their results offer a more accurate count of the number of expedition members who died at different locations. A few of the early fatalities were buried at Beechey Island, and their frozen remains, which were exhumed by archaeologists in the 1980s, were eerily well preserved. The bones of the sailors who died after abandoning the ships, however, were much more scattered, dispersed by animal scavenging and human activity.

Stenton said that, in one case, bones from one individual were found at two sites about a mile apart. The researchers think that an 1879 search party most likely found some of the victim’s bones, then carried them to the new site and reburied them.

Four samples in the study were identified as female, which doesn’t fit with the picture of an all-male expedition crew. The authors ruled out the possibility that these samples came from Inuit women because the genetic and archaeological evidence associated with these individuals suggests they were European.

Stenton and his colleagues think the most likely explanation is that studies of ancient DNA commonly fail to amplify the Y chromosome (the male sex chromosome), which can result in faulty identifications. However, the researchers noted that it wasn’t unheard of for women to serve in disguise in the Royal Navy.

—Live Science

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