Neither wreck, as of the research informing this article, has yielded human remains. The crew members whose remains have been found and in several cases identified — Gregory in 2021, Fitzjames in 2024, and four more in 2026 — all died on land, at sites on King William Island and the adjacent mainland, during the march after the ships were abandoned. The wreck sites and the land sites are distinct, and the identifications made so far have come from land-based archaeological contexts.
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## Who Was James Fitzjames, the Man Behind the Jawbone
The biographical record of Fitzjames, combined with his letters written during the expedition’s early weeks, provides a portrait of some specificity.
His letters from the voyage’s first leg — before the ships lost contact with the outside world in the summer of 1845 — describe his shipmates and commanders with affection and wit. He wrote warmly about Franklin, describing him as a good-humored and respected leader. He described the ships’ officers and noted the specific personal qualities he observed in the men he would spend the next years with. He was clearly a skilled observer of people and a natural writer.
He had no wife or legitimate family of his own. He was not publicly married, and no children are recorded. His close relationships were with William Coningham and with the naval world in which he had spent his career since the age of twelve. His identity was bound up in his naval service in the specific way that characterized many career officers of the period: the Royal Navy was not simply his employer but the institutional frame of his adult life.