In May of 1845, 129 men sailed out of the Thames on two

ships — HMS Erebus and HMS Terror — searching for the

Northwest Passage through the Arctic. It was supposed to

be the voyage that closed the last gap on the map.

Not one of them came home.

For 180 years, most of those men had no confirmed

identities. They were a number. A statistic in a

historical disaster that has fascinated researchers,

explorers, and historians for generations.

This past May, a DNA research team published findings

that changed that. Using genetic material matched to

living descendants tracked down through genealogical

research, they identified four more of those men by

name after 166 years of uncertainty. One of them —

a sailor found alone on a frozen ridge, in the wrong

uniform, with his own papers in his pocket — had been

a mystery since 1859.

He has a name now.

This episode tells the full story. The expedition, the

ice, the Victory Point Note — the only written record

ever recovered from the disaster. What actually killed

the crew. The Inuit oral testimony that described the

truth for 160 years while the Victorian establishment

refused to believe it. And the 2026 DNA breakthrough

that finally gave four of those men their names back

after a century and a half of silence.

This is one of the greatest mysteries in the history

of exploration. And it just got a little closer to

being solved. Episode 3.