When an 1859 search party found a lone sailor’s remains on King William Island, the clues did not seem to agree. A leather pocketbook held papers identifying Harry Peglar, a senior hand aboard HMS Terror. But fragments of clothing looked more like the garments of a steward or officer’s servant. For generations, that mismatch kept the sailor’s identity in doubt.
A 2026 peer-reviewed study has now concluded that the remains were Peglar’s. The answer came from comparing DNA recovered from the archaeological remains with samples from people whose family histories traced back to members of the Franklin expedition. The result resolves one unusually personal puzzle in a disaster whose larger questions are still open.
The papers pointed to one man; the clothing suggested another
The remains were discovered in 1859 on the south shore of King William Island in what is now Nunavut. With them, searchers found a leather pocketbook containing several papers, including a seaman’s certificate for Henry Peter “Harry” Peglar, captain of the foretop on HMS Terror. A clothes brush and comb were also among the objects associated with the site.
Then there were the clothing fragments. Researchers describe pieces of a double-breasted waistcoat and a black silk neckerchief tied in a loose bow. Those details, along with the brush, were interpreted as pointing toward a domestic shipboard role—a steward or an officer’s servant—rather than Peglar’s rank. That led some researchers to consider whether the remains belonged to one of the stewards and Peglar’s papers had been carried by a friend.
Two proposed alternatives, Thomas Armitage and William Gibson, became part of the debate. The objects seemed to tell two different stories: the pocketbook named Peglar, while the clothes made another identity appear plausible. The research team revisited those clues rather than treating either one as decisive on its own.
What the DNA comparison established
In the study published in Polar Record, researchers analyzed archaeological bone samples and compared the results with DNA from a presumed maternal descendant of Peglar and descendants of six of the expedition’s eight stewards. The tested steward descendants did not match the remains. The remains’ mitochondrial DNA matched the presumed Peglar descendant with a genetic distance of zero. The authors say the DNA and genealogical evidence confirm that the sailor was Henry Peter “Harry” Peglar.
The paper also describes a separate comparison involving a presumed paternal descendant. That Y-chromosome result was not conclusive, so it should not be presented as a second genetic confirmation. The study’s identification rests on the matching mitochondrial profile together with the genealogical evidence and the elimination of the tested steward candidates.
That distinction matters. DNA did not explain why the clothing appeared to indicate a steward’s role, and the study does not prove exactly how the garments came to be with Peglar. The authors discuss the conflicting evidence, but the reason for it remains unsettled. The scientific result answers who the remains belonged to; it does not turn every artifact into a solved clue.
One name recovered from a much larger mystery
Peglar sailed on the 1845 Franklin expedition, which set out in HMS Erebus and HMS Terror to search for the Northwest Passage. The ships became trapped in Arctic ice. A note left at Victory Point records that the vessels were abandoned in April 1848 and that 105 survivors planned to travel south. All 129 men in the expedition died.
The identification of Peglar does not reveal the full sequence of what happened to him, why he was alone when searchers found him, or why his clothing differed from what investigators expected for his rank. Nor does it resolve the expedition’s overall fate. Historians continue to weigh written records, archaeology and Inuit testimony, while the ships and scattered remains provide new evidence in different ways.
What makes this case so compelling is the long gap between a name in a pocketbook and a name supported by modern analysis. The papers had suggested Peglar from the start. The clothing created a reasonable challenge to that reading. Descendant DNA gave researchers a way to test the competing possibilities and, at last, make a supported identification.
Sources: Douglas R. Stenton, Stephen Fratpietro, Kaitlyn Gorsalitz and Robert W. Park, “Some very hard ground to heave”: DNA identification of Harry Peglar, Polar Record (2026); Meilan Solly, Smithsonian Magazine (2026).
Image note: The featured illustration is symbolic and does not depict the actual discovery site, artifacts or human remains.
