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

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.

Fitzjames was the captain of HMS Erebus, one of two ships led by Franklin that disappeared in the Arctic nearly 180 years ago. That vessel and its sister ship HMS Terror left England in 1845 with 129 men and high hopes aboard.

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.

Nigel Gambier has always been proud of his ancestor, who captained one of the ill-starred ships on Sir John Franklin's disastrous expedition in search of the Northwest Passage.

James Fitzjames was one of the captains of British explorer Sir John Franklin's two ships that went missing in 1845.

"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.

The skeletal remains of a crew member from Sir John Franklin's 1845 Northwest Passage expedition was identified in a joint study by researchers from the University of Waterloo and Lakehead University.