Franklin’s expedition left Kent, England, on May 19, 1845, in the hopes of finally mapping a Northwestern route around the world to Asia. By the time the crew left their ships in 1848, Franklin had been dead for almost a year, so the 105 survivors turned to a senior officer, Commander James Fitzjames, to lead their deadly, futile march.

Researchers recently identified James Fitzjames, a captain on the ill-fated HMS Erebus that went looking for the Northwest Passage in 1845

Captain James Fitzjames served as captain of the HMS Erebus, but his rank didn't prevent his men from eating his remains in a desperate bid to survive.

With this research, Fitzjames becomes the first identified victim of cannibalism from the Franklin expedition. His recovered bones have been placed in a cairn, along with the others, and marked with a memorial plaque at the site of their deaths.

Later, both the ships got trapped in Arctic ice. The crew was faced with a deadly situation and so 105 of them left the ship in search of help. A lot of them died before they could abandon it. In total, 129 sailors lost their lives.

Scientists have discovered the identity of a cannibalized victim who sailed on the doomed Northwest Passage expedition of 1845 to 1848.

In 1845, Sir John Franklin set out from England with 128 men aboard two ships, the HMS Erebus and the HMS Terror, on a mission to discover the Northwest Passage — a famed sea route from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean through a group of sparsely populated Canadian islands.