He is the second of 129 men to be identified by his DNA. The work of naming the others continues.
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*Slug:* james-fitzjames-dna-identification-franklin-expedition-tooth-king-william-island-2024
*Meta description:* DNA from a tooth found on King William Island identified James Fitzjames, captain of HMS Erebus, as the second Franklin expedition member confirmed by genetics.
*Category:* DNA / Historical Identity
*Thumbnail hook:* A preserved tooth from an 1848 Arctic disaster helped identify a Royal Navy captain missing for 176 years — and the cut marks on his jaw told another story.
*Tracking ID:* BM-CANDIDATE-091
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## The Royal Navy in 1845: Why the Expedition Was Sent
Understanding why a government sent 129 men into one of the most hostile environments on earth requires understanding the specific institutional and cultural context of the Royal Navy in the mid-1840s.
The Napoleonic Wars had ended in 1815. For thirty years after Waterloo, the Royal Navy — which had been one of the most powerful fighting forces in the world at its peak — found itself in a prolonged period of peace that left its ships, officers, and institutional culture without the wartime purpose that had defined it for the previous century. The officers who had been promoted rapidly during wartime found themselves on half-pay in peacetime, their careers stalled and their skills underemployed. The ships that had been essential to British strategic power sat in harbor.
Exploration became, in this context, a way of maintaining the Navy’s institutional relevance and demonstrating British scientific and national prestige. The Arctic was the specific theater where the Navy focused its exploratory ambitions in the first half of the nineteenth century, partly because the Northwest Passage remained one of the few significant geographical questions the late eighteenth century had left unresolved, and partly because the specific logistical challenges of Arctic exploration — ships, crews, prolonged voyages in confined spaces — played to the Navy’s particular capabilities.