His Ship Vanished in the Arctic 176 Years Ago. DNA Has Offered a Clue. For the first time, researchers have identified the remains of a sailor from the doomed 1845 Franklin expedition of the fabled Northwest Passage. A facial reconstruction of what John Gregory, a sailor on the H.M.S. Erebus, might have looked like, based on DNA collected from a living descendant.Credit...Diana Trepkov/ University of Waterloo May 5, 2021Updated 2:10 p.m. ET On July 9, 1845, two months after departing from Greenhithe, England, Warrant Officer John Gregory wrote a letter to his wife from Greenland in which he described seeing whales and icebergs for the first time.