What is documented is the outcome: the jaw with the preserved tooth that yielded a Y-chromosome profile matching a living Gambier descendant is now in a marked location on King William Island, identified by name. The captain of HMS Erebus, who signed the last document the expedition ever produced and who died approximately 80 kilometers from the ships he commanded, has a resting place with his name on it, 176 years after he left England and never came back.
The tooth held his DNA. The DNA found his living relative. The science and the genealogy and the institutional memory of a 170-year-long archaeological project gave the jaw a name. And the commemorative cairn on King William Island gave the name a place in the landscape that James Fitzjames died in.
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## Conclusion: The Second of 129
The identification of James Fitzjames from a preserved molar at an Arctic archaeological site, announced in September 2024, is a small piece of a very large history. The Franklin expedition’s disappearance remains one of the most studied and discussed disasters in the history of exploration, and the identification of the man who signed the last document the expedition produced adds a specifically personal dimension to what has previously been understood primarily through aggregates — 129 men, four ships lost, 451 bones from at least thirteen people.
The science is straightforward in outline: a tooth preserved DNA; the DNA produced a Y-chromosome profile; a genealogist found a living person who shares that profile through a paternal line carefully traced through records that had been designed to obscure the connection; the match was confirmed. What makes the identification possible in 2024 when it would not have been possible even two decades earlier is the combination of improvements in ancient DNA extraction methods, the development of Y-chromosome profiling approaches sensitive enough to work with highly fragmented ancient material, the digitization of genealogical archives that makes it possible to trace 175-year-old family trees with unprecedented thoroughness, and the specific institutional commitment of a research program that has been building toward this kind of result since the 1990s.