The confirmation of GregoryвЂ™s identity is the highest-profile recent development in the ongoing quest to solve the Franklin mystery. (Erebus lies in the shallow waters of Wilmot and Crampton Bay, about 100 kilometres south of the Terror.) The discovery of the Erebus wreck in 2014, and the Terror two years later, in many ways only raised more questions, particularly regarding how the ships ended up where they are. Franklin and all 128 of his men died.Д«ut what really happened on the expedition has been an enduring mystery. The reinforced wooden ships that sailed from Greenhithe, England, in 1845 were beset by ice off King William Island in 1846 and deserted two years later, according to a note left by the crew in a cairn. The boat was HMS Erebus, which along with HMS Terror carried their British crew on the ill-fated polar mission led by John Franklin into what is now the Canadian Arctic in search of the elusive Northwest Passage.

вЂњHe was an engineer on the boat and his DNA was found to match mine.вЂќ вЂњItвЂ™s quite an eerie feeling,вЂќ Gregory said from his home in South Africa. Jonathan Gregory didnвЂ™t think too much about the implications when he sent the cheek swab off for analysis.Д«ut then the results came back, confirming for the first time through DNA the identity of remains of one of the members of the 19th-century Franklin Expedition: his great-great-great grandfather, Warrant Officer John Gregory. Pandemic forces another delay in exploration of shipwrecks but other work continues A facial reconstruction based on the skeletal remains of John Gregory, the first member of the 1845 Franklin Expedition to be identified through DNA, shows what the engineer aboard the HMS Erebus would have looked like.

Hms erebus discovered