Eligius III

The Eligius III was an interstellar spaceship owned by the Eligius Corporation which originated from Earth. Its mission, which was launched before the First Apocalypse, was to tap for oil on a far away habitable world since Earth's oil resources had been virtually depleted. The ship was also supposed to leave behind colonists to see whether or not a planet could be survivable.

The ships complement of crew and passengers were inoculated with Nightblood; allowing them to withstand the increased radiation from the planet's two suns. However, according to Emori, she says that the radiation levels are good.

The ship's status, as well as that of the crew and its mission, wasn't known to the survivors aboard Eligius IV. It was assumed the ship arrived at its destination; however, this can't be verified because the mission was launched shortly before the Nuclear Apocalypse. It's unknown if they made any attempts to communicate with Earth in the intervening years.

History
236 years before the Eligius IV arrived on Alpha, Eligius III was assigned to a colonizing mission. It visited five different habitable worlds. It first arrived on Alpha, due to to the village on the world having infinity symbols on banners. This shows that Becca Franco helped with tech on Eligius III.

Inhabitants
These were original residents of Eligius III.

Mission
Phase One of the mission was to test whether or not a settlement could successfully survive on each habitable world. Phase Two was to populate the colony using embryos. Supplies such as motorcycles, nightblood, guns, food, water, building supplies and other materials were given to each group to try to survive.

The Alpha mission successfully built a settlement and a radiation tower after learning about the eclipse and the bugs.

Throughout the Series
In The Tinder Box, Jackson indirectly refers to Eligius III by telling Abby that Becca first developed the Nightblood for the Eligius Mining Company to protect against solar radiation for long space missions.
 * -|Season Four=

In Sleeping Giants, After seeing that Clarke Griffin has black blood, Miles Shaw mentions a ship called "Eligius III" had Nightbloods on board.
 * -|Season Five=

In Pandora's Box, Raven shows Murphy a list of four Eligius-class ships.

In Damocles (Part 1), Eligius III was mentioned as Diyoza says that they weren't criminals.

In Damocles (Part 2), Monty reveals in his video message that Eligius III was sent to a new habitable world to tap for oil, since Earth's oil supplies had run out, which is the same world the Eligius IV is now orbiting.

In Sanctum, Bellamy reveals that according to the file, Eligius III was a colonizing mission and it went to 5 planets that met necessary conditions for life, dropping mission teams on each one. Eligius III came to the first habitable world called, "Alpha." The Lightbourne family, aboard the ship are also introduced. Jordan Green and the others deduced that Eligius III had arrived on Alpha about over 200 years ago.
 * -|Season Six=

In Red Sun Rising, a flashback shows that in 2045, a mission team from Eligius III is on Alpha. They decided to name Alpha, "Sanctum". Later, one of the members of the mission team suffers a psychosis.

In The Children of Gabriel, it's revealed that the original Prime colonists became a royal family of the current settlement because of their special blood.

Notes and Trivia

 * Jason Rothenberg said that we will learn more about Eligius III in Season Six.
 * According to Rothenberg, Eligius III was sent to the planet 236 years before Eligius IV arrived there.
 * Individuals from Eligius IV know some things about Eligius III. Miles Shaw and Charmaine Diyoza talk about them having blood alteration and being sent to a habitable moon. Diyoza and Paxton McCreary also converse about them saying that the Eligius III crew were not criminals, hinting that they were aware of their mission.