On the finding of James Fitzjames

It's been a long, long time since anyone last heard anything from -- or of -- James Fitzjames. His last known letter was to Edward Sabine, and it closed with his characteristic optimism and high spirits:

    Sir John is very well and full of life and energy - and we are all as happy as possible looking forward to the commencement of our real work - No one I am sure will rejoice more than yourself at our success which we all anticipate eventually if not sooner.

It was dated 11 July 1845, and the next day went into the mailbag aboard the Barretto Junior. A little less than three years later, he penned the postscript in the margin to his own note, deposited at Victory Point, and telling of the deaths that had ensued while the ships were trapped, Franklin's included, signing himself "Captain Hms Erebus." After that, silence.

Which is not quite the same thing as nothing at all. His letters to his brother and sister-in-law were privately published, and came to serve a the first words most people read of all the letters sent home from from the men of the Expedition. Every account told to the Inuit, every rumor and sighting and possibility of a sighting, was scanned for evidence of his presence. Most notably, perhaps, in 1999, the novelist John Wilson published North With Franklin: The Lost Journals of James Fitzjames, in which his familiar voice, by some sort of conjuring, returned, lively as ever, and again took up his tale. Fitzjames figured in numerous other Franklin fictions, chipper and loquacious, almost never despairing. Most recently, as memorably played by Tobias Menzies in the AMC adaptation of Dan Simmons's The Terror, he came to life once more, cheered and reconciled and eventually helped to an easeful passing from a world of pain by his friend and fellow in command, Francis Crozier.

But now all this fierce imagining is done -- he himself is found, and in a place that seems to defy all our auguries -- near one of the abandoned whaleboats in Erebus Bay, a site presumably reached by the retreating men of the Expedition within the first weeks of their southward struggle. Did he perish early on from some illness or accident? Or did he go further, but then return, perhaps to look after those could go on no more? It may never be possible to know, but what he can say is that his jawbone -- known as "mandible 226" -- shows cut-marks consistent with survival cannibalism. It's hard to imagine a state of starvation in which either the hands or face, which as Dr. Anne Keeenleyside once remarked are the "most human parts of the body," would be used as food, but that state must have been reached at some point.

There are two horizons over which an answer to these uncertainties may someday appear:  first, through the continued work of archaeologists such as Doug Stenton and his team, who are patiently surveying all the known sites on land with Franklin remains, and whose DNA database may yet identify other individuals. Secondly, we can hope that just perhaps, from the wreck of the Erebus, some written indication may come that will give us further clues. Right now, what we chiefly lack is a timeline -- after the April abandonment and the VP note all is blank -- and if either ship was ever re-manned, the records there (if found) might advance our knowledge of these events. Until then, what more can we say? 

I'll let John Wilson's fictive Fitzjames have the last word:

My dearest Elizabeth, the end will come with you in my thoughts and your picture clutched in my hand. Remember me fondly. For the last time, I wish you Good Night.