The remains of one of the men on who died during the doomed Franklin Expedition has finally been identified. Commander James Fitzjames of the HMS Erebus has become only the second body identified, thanks to DNA from a descendant.

Concrete evidence of James Fitzjames as the first identified victim of cannibalism lifts the veil of anonymity that for 170 years spared the families of individual members of the 1845 Franklin expedition from the horrific reality of what might have befallen the body of their ancestor.

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

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.

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.

"Sir John Franklin died on the 11th of June 1847 and the total loss by deaths in the Expedition has been to this date 9 officers and 15 men." Those 105 survivors never made it home, and probably never off the island.

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.