Arctic Genius: Sir William Edward Parry, The Original Arctic Explorer

Arctic Genius: Sir William Edward Parry, The Original Arctic Explorer

by Trevor Ware

Barnsley, South Yorkshire: Pen & Sword, 2025.

 

Reviewed by Frank Michael Schuster

 

Biographies are hugely popular with readers, far more so than historical works. A visit to any branch of a bookshop chain such as Waterstones or Barnes & Noble makes this clear, as the biography section is far more extensive than the history section. However, writing biographies does not exactly get one very far in academic circles. At most, well-established history professors who have spent at least half their lives studying a particular period sometimes write biographies of well-known key figures from that era, such as James Cook, Horatio Nelson or John Franklin, and usually only after they have retired.

Writing the biographies of people who are not quite so famous is often confidently left either to descendants who have guarded the family archives for generations, or to outsiders interested in the subject, such as Trevor Ware. He worked in the food industry for decades but was also a passionate sailing enthusiast. During one of his sailing trips, he became captivated by the ice and decided, after retirement, to devote himself to the significance of ice for British Arctic expeditions between 1772 and 1854. This research, which earned him two academic degrees, led to a more in-depth study of Sir William Edward Parry. As a result, a new biography is now available. After all, in the first third of the 19th century, Parry was the most experienced Arctic explorer and a celebrated figure, just like his friend Sir John Franklin. However, Franklin’s tragic and mysterious demise during the search for the Northwest Passage in 1845 also was to cast a shadow over Parry’s life and his earlier successes and failures in the Arctic. His son Edward’s memoirs of his father, published in 1857, two years after his death, went through several printings within a very short time, but interest then quickly faded.

It was only when the Arctic began to attract more attention again in the wake of the Cold War that interest in its history of exploration was rekindled. Ann Parry capitalised on this renewed interest. In the early 1960s, after she opened a family cedar chest and fell upon a collection of Parry’s letters, she published a biography of her great-great-grandfather, before the family handed over their archives to the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge. 

But that was more than half a century ago, and the renewed interest in William Edward Parry’s life did not last long. So one was naturally curious to see what new insights Ware’s beautifully crafted and lavishly produced book had to offer, particularly given the promises made by the renowned publisher and the author in the flap text and on the cover. There, the book is described not only as the biography of a forgotten hero, but also as a story in which Parry played a part in Franklin’s downfall. It is also pointed out that encounters with the indigenous peoples of North-West America played an important role in the search for a short sea route between Europe and Asia. In addition, the author emphasises how fascinated the public back home was by the Arctic’s otherworldliness, a fascination reflected in the media of the time, such as the press, photography and panoramas. The search for the Northwest Passage in the first half of the 19th century is once again compared there to the American–Soviet space race to the moon, particularly as it was part of the global exploration of the Earth’s magnetic field.

Put forward by other authors already long ago, this last argument that the Arctic fascinated the British public in much the same way as the Moon fascinated Americans and the world in the 1960s is still worth considering. One must, however, ask to what extent the Russian interest in the Northwest Passage was not primarily a pretext for the British Admiralty to enthuse politicians and the public about the search. But this need not necessarily be addressed in a biography of W. E. Parry.

Following a chronological approach, Ware outlines the course of Parry’s life. Unlike his previous biographers, who were drawn from his own family, for Ware Parry was not merely a devoted Christian of consistent piety with a strong social conscience, but “a doughty explorer and a man who always wished to ‘see for himself’, however difficult, exhausting, or dangerous” (p. xvi).

Parry’s early years were greatly influenced by his father, a pious, talented and well respected doctor in Bath, who instilled a concern for the poor and underprivileged, a fond interest in the sciences, and even skill in sheep farming, all of which would later open doors for his son. Through family connections to Sir Murray Maxwell young Parry began a career in the Royal Navy during the Napoleonic wars. But it was especially his scientific talent, which caught the attention of second secretary to the Admiralty John Barrow and led to his fortuitous appointment as second-in-command to the 1818 Arctic expedition under John Ross in search of the fabled Northwest Passage. Ross’s reputation suffered badly because he believed that Lancaster Sound, the entrance to the passage, was blocked by mountains, whereas Parry had seen nothing but open water.

In the following controversy if these mountains existed John Ross’s nephew James sided against his uncle with Parry, with whom he subsequently made several further voyages to the Arctic. However, James Ross had not undertaken his previous first voyage in Parry's ship, as Ware claims, but quite traditionally in his own uncle’s vessel, a fact which is not entirely insignificant for the subsequent relationship between the two of them and with Parry.

Unlike John Ross's career Parry’s took a boost when the sceptical Barrow entrusted him with leading the follow-up expedition. Not only did this expedition prove Ross wrong, but it also traversed almost the entire Canadian Archipelago—and thus a large part of the passage—making Parry famous back home.

Just briefly recounting Parry’s achievements and innovations on this expedition, Ware misses an opportunity to support his contention of Parry as an “Arctic Genius.” Parry was indeed an innovator. His expedition was the first seaborne Royal Naval expedition to intentionally overwinter in the Arctic, a dangerous and untried proposition for the time. His experiences there, and above all his approach to maintaining the physical and mental health of the crew, in clothing, food, and entertainments, set the precedent and standard for numerous Arctic expeditions that followed, points overlooked by the author. Parry’s next three voyages however, which included a failed attempt on the North Pole, never achieved the level of success as his first.

As a hydrographer of the navy, Parry was subsequently also not as successful as he would have liked, because he was often hampered by the Admiralty’s bureaucracy. Being familiar with sheep farming, in 1829, he accepted the offer to serve as first Commissioner to the Australian Agricultural Company—which had a status similar to that of the East India Company or the Hudson’s Bay Company—engaged in the sheep industry and the exportation of wool. In this role, Parry served as a dedicated and trustworthy operator, while at the same time helping to improve the lives of both convicts and indentured servants bound to the company.

Ware’s assertion that Parry’s work as an administrative official in Australia was linked to “expensive and ambitious efforts … to establish another new colony in the Northern Territories at Darwin, as a settlement and naval base resembling that of Singapore” (p. 119) is not entirely incorrect. In fact, there were several such unsuccessful attempts on the north coast of Australia, but not at Darwin. The bay later named after Charles Darwin, where the city of the same name is located today, was just as unknown at the time as Darwin himself. As is well known, he was only to become famous through his voyage around the world aboard HMS Beagle from 1831 to 1836.

Returning to England in 1834, Parry became the first comptroller of the department of steam machinery of the Navy, among other things, reorganising the packet boat service in 1837. After retiring from the Navy in 1846, he became head first of the Haslar Royal Naval Hospital in Gosport, Hampshire, and then of Greenwich Hospital.

Most of this is not really new. For those unfamiliar with Ann Parry’s book, however, much of it is likely to be unknown nonetheless. Despite grandiose announcements, the biography is not only conventionally told but, much like the aforementioned predecessors, heavily focused on family life. The only novelty in its approach is that Ware repeatedly compares Parry’s biography with that of Franklin. Since the latter was only four years older, the parallels between their naval careers, particularly in the Arctic, are not surprising. The fact that Parry, during his four years in New South Wales had to contend with similar problems to those faced by Franklin as Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (later Tasmania), on the other hand, is. However, unlike Franklin, Parry at least had the backing of his superiors in London. Parry, whose father was well respected but by no means part of the upper class, had managed to marry into the conservative aristocratic Stanley family thanks to his reputation as an Arctic hero. Yet he repeatedly clashed with them not only over notions of social standing, but also because of his evangelical and partly liberal views. As he shared both of these with Franklin, it seems obvious to the author that Franklin, too, must therefore have clashed with Edward Smith-Stanley—who had become Colonial Secretary in 1841—and so ultimately have been doomed to fail. One does, however, learn quite a lot beforehand about the opinions and views of the Stanleys from Parry’s immediate circle in general, and those of his mother-in-law in particular. Yet this does little to shed light on the conflict between Governor Franklin and his superior in London, as too little is revealed about this particular family member. That Parry, especially against the backdrop of his own conflicts with the Stanleys, as Ware seems to believe, supported Franklin in securing command of the expedition that subsequently ended tragically in order to overcome the conflicts with the Secretary, is conceivable, but not really plausible given everything we have learnt up to that point.

The suggestion that Parry is therefore partly to blame for Franklin’s death is as unconvincing as the author’s other arguments, which are not really new. For example, Parry is said to have sent Franklin into the ice trap in which the ships eventually got beset by failing to support Franklin’s own wish to search for the passage again from the Pacific. Ware implies that Franklin would likely have succeeded, as Robert McClure later did. Yet even McClure failed to navigate the passage with a single ship, which was and remained Franklin’s objective. Whether from the east or the west, given everything we now know about the climatic and meteorological conditions in the Canadian Arctic—conditions of which no one had even the slightest idea at the time—Franklin’s expedition very likely would have ended up either where it actually met its demise, or where, years later, McClure’s expedition also nearly perished. However, Ware avoids the precise circumstances of McClure’s expedition as much as today’s scientific knowledge and findings, which help to shed light not only on the history of Arctic exploration but also on the scientific research of the time.

Ware does cover the topics of geomagnetism, meteorology, geology and botany—which were important to Parry on his expeditions—in somewhat greater detail, though only in separate appendices to his work. The topics of gravity and zoology, however, which are at least as important, are missing. Because he largely excludes today's knowledge of these scientific subjects, the reader finds it difficult to place them in context.

Unfortunately, the context is also lacking with regard to the Inuit, giving the impression that John Ross, on his first expedition in 1818 discovered the Inuit, the indigenous people of Greenland, and portrayed them as ‘Arctic Highlanders’ and as primitive Stone Age people. Yet the inhabitants of Greenland, the northern part of the North American continent and north-eastern Russia—referred to at the time as Eskimos—had long been known. How else could Ross, who had been given command because of his knowledge of Scandinavia, have taken an interpreter with him who was himself an Inuk? Yet this is not made clear, because Ware refers to the interpreter only as a Greenlander, without mentioning that Kalaallit or, in Danish, Grønlændere, is their self-designation. What makes the British encounter in North Greenland in 1818 so special was that they had rediscovered the local Inughuit. In the 17th century, these people had first lost contact with everyone else and, as a result, eventually also their knowledge of how to build boats and bows. That is why they were now, in the most literal sense, stranded. Compared to the rest of the Inuit of Greenland or the Canadian Archipelago, they therefore did indeed lead a primitive life. But none of this is mentioned. The press and public back home saw their prejudices about primitive savages confirmed, but Ross and, even more so, Parry viewed the situation in a more differentiated way, as a close reading of the travel accounts, particularly that of Parry’s second voyage in 1821–23, shows. But Ware, too, relies primarily on the livelier and more vivid account by Parry’s second-in-command, George Francis Lyon, just as others before him did—though they wrote about the discovery of the Northwest Passage rather than about W. E. Parry. In a biography, one should have taken the trouble to present Parry’s own, admittedly not entirely obvious, perspective based on his account and his letters. Consequently, one unfortunately learns nothing really new about the encounters with the Inuit.

The same applies to the alleged British–Russian rivalry in the Arctic. Ware, too, mentions only the well-known Russian Arctic expedition of 1815–18, to which the British Admiralty responded with the two expeditions of 1818. He, too, refers only to the few well-known passages in Parry’s correspondence where Russian interest in the Arctic is mentioned, though without explaining what that interest consists of. The fact that relations with Russia appear to have been more complex is suggested by the casual mention of a message to Parry stating that, should he reach the Pacific, he could send his mail to London via Russia. Ware does not, however, go into this in any detail. The comparison with the space race fits all too well into the conventional image of the search for the Northwest Passage. In my view, the author is once again making things a little too simple here, but since he is writing about Parry, it suffices for him to refer only to Parry.

All this would, admittedly, leave one or two readers disappointed or perhaps somewhat perplexed. Even though Trevor Ware touches on several aspects of Parry’s life rather briefly, what he has to say on the matter still makes perfect sense, even if it was presented in somewhat greater detail and more vividly by Ann Parry. What is truly annoying, however, are the many errors and mix-ups the author makes when it comes to apparent trivialities, a few of which have already been mentioned:

As a British author with a degree in naval history and a thesis on the early 19th century, Ware should really know that the Duke of Clarence, the Lord High Admiral and later King William IV, was the brother and not the son of George IV. If not, the error should have been spotted by someone at the publisher’s.

It is to Ware’s credit that he does not wish to pass over in silence the whaling masters and mates who, on account of their Arctic experience, were hired on Royal Navy expeditions as so-called Greenland pilots or ice masters and ice mates. But if he is to do them justice, then please do so properly: ‘Four experienced “ice masters” were signed on: Allison and Craford … and Fife and Alexander. There were eight young midshipmen including Horatio Nelson Head, an artist, and Francis Rawdon’ (p. 87), writes Ware about Parry’s third expedition. John Allison was the ice master on all of Parry’s Arctic voyages, with the exception of the last one, and George Crawford was present on all of them either as mate or as master, except for the 1818 expedition, when he was not part of Ross and Parry’s expedition but of that led by David Buchan and John Franklin towards the North Pole. In 1824–25, however, the mates were George Champion and Thomas Donaldson. George Fife was ice master on the two previous voyages and Alexander Elder, who has lost his surname here, was the mate.

Ware also seems to have lost track of the midshipmen, as there were not eight but only seven, though he presumably mistook one for two without noticing. Francis Rawdon Moira Crozier is the full name of the young officer who, apart from James Clark Ross, later became the best known of those who were with Parry in the Arctic. It is all the more surprising that the author did not notice his mistake, given that a few pages later he not only mentions a midshipman named Francis Crozier, but even quotes him.

With a little goodwill, one might perhaps overlook such errors, not to mention a dozen names of people and ships Ware got wrong—were it not for the fact that the author incorporates his misinformation into his argument as well. He sees the underpowered steam engines on board as an explanation for the downfall of Franklin’s expedition, for the engines were by no means sufficient “in the two heavily laden ships to push through even moderate pack ice” (p. 164), as Parry must have known, which is why, in Ware’s eyes, he is once again partly to blame for Franklin’s downfall. “Only one officer, Francis Crozier, had had experience with steam power, having been on the Congo expedition on a paddle steamer” (p. 65), Ware also writes. However, the engines were by no means intended to turn the ships into icebreakers; they were primarily intended to serve as auxiliary engines whilst sailing (if they were becalmed or sailing against a current). Therefore, the officers’ experience with steam engines was not a decisive factor in their selection. In any case, none of what Ware writes about the officers’ experience is accurate: Crozier had neither served on steamships nor was he a member of the 1816 Congo Expedition, which also ended in disaster. However, several other officers had been on ships with steam engines on board, including James Fitzjames. Ware may have confused Crozier with Fitzjames, although Fitzjames was on the Euphrates Expedition of 1835–37 and not on the Congo Expedition—and this would not be the only instance: the author describes Fitzjames, in comparison with Franklin, as “a younger, healthier and more experienced commander, who had served under James Clark Ross” (p. 168). He was undoubtedly younger, perhaps healthier, but it was Crozier who had served under Parry alongside Ross in the Arctic, and subsequently under Ross in Antarctic waters, while Fitzjames had no Arctic experience whatsoever before setting out there in 1845. Fitzjames was therefore not necessarily more suited to leading the expedition than Franklin. 

The argument that Parry was complicit in Franklin’s downfall in several ways is therefore unsustainable in this form.

What the author and publisher should certainly do, should there ever be a second edition, is: 1st to correct the many factual errors, by no means all of which have been mentioned here; 2nd to revise the sections of the book concerning John Franklin, taking greater account of the extensive research into his stay in Australia and, above all, his final expedition  and the search expeditions, (which are quickly passed over); and 3rd review the bibliography. Then Trevor Ware’s book would indeed be a welcome addition to historical Arctic literature in general and biographical literature in particular.

Unikkaaqtuat: An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends

UNIKKAAQTUAT:

An Introduction to Inuit Myths and Legends

Edited by Neill Christopher, Noel McDermott, and Louise Flaherty

Iqaluit, Nunavut: Inhabit Media, 2025

$28.99CAN

Reviewed by Lawrence Millman

Unikkaaqtuat is a typically elongated Inuktitut word that means “traditional Inuit stories.”  The book itself is a collection of myths and legends originally collected by ethnographers such as Franz Boas, Heinrich Rink, and Knud Rasmussen.  It consists of a Foreword, an Introduction, several dozen stories, illustrations, a Glossary, and References.  That it hasn’t been reviewed thus far in any Inuit publication like Etudes/Inuit is perhaps not surprising.

Consider the stories from Franz Boas, most of which were told to him by a whaler named William Muter, who heard the stories from Baffin Island Inuit.  Boas customized them for his books, and then the editors of this book further customized them.  Thus what might have initially been accurate, not to mention idiomatic stories ended up being more or less  summarizations.  Would a traditional Inuk use a phrase like shape-shifter (as the editors do several times in this book) to describe a standard animal-human composite? I suspect not.

To continue: the language of these retellings does not suggest direct contact with Inuit oral tradition.  For example, anaq, a commonly used word in Inuit storytelling, means shit, but neither that word or an equivalent  word appear in this book.  Indeed, there is hardly anything indecent in any of these stories despite the fact that many traditional Inuit stories deserve an R rating.  Also, the reader is told to be on the lookout for stories about “the correct treatment of children” even though such treatment consists traditionally of laughter, lest the child take misfortune too seriously.

As a complement to Unikkaaqtuat, I might suggest a book entitled A Kayak Full of Ghosts.  Pardon my narcissism, but that book’s author is yours truly.  In its pages are stories I collected directly from Inuit elders in the 1980s.  In retelling those stories, I tried to make them seem as oral as possible so that the reader would feel like he or she was seated next to the elder in question.  Thus there was no bowdlerizing in order to make the stories appropriate for strictly raised kids.  Nor was there any effort to restrict humor, a common ingredient both in Inuit lore and Inuit life.

Unikkaaqtuat does have certain virtues, however.  The Introduction provides a very good overview of Inuit mythology.  Stories from different parts of the Arctic are included in, appropriately, different versions. The illustrations by Inuit artist Germaine Arnattaujuq are excellent.  And some of the stories have rarely appeared in print.  An example: “Dialogue Between Two Ravens.”  If you want to learn what those ravens might have been saying to each other, I suggest you procure a copy of this book.

For Glory, Not Gold

For Glory, Not Gold: Expeditions through Arctic lands, 1818–1876

by Hubert Sagnières. 

400 pp. Paris: Flammarion. ISBN 978-2-08-048791-9

Reviewed by Jonathan Dore

In For Glory, Not Gold, Franco-Canadian executive and global explorer Hubert Sagnières repeats the approach he sums up as “leurs images et leurs mots” that he pioneered in his 2023 book Daring French Explorations 1714–1854: Trailblazing Adventures Around the World: to tell the story of a series of expeditions mostly using the explorers’ own words and illustrated with their own watercolours and sketches, or the more formal engravings and maps they published on their return (many taken from copies in the author’s own extensive library of early editions). Each chapter, generally focusing on one explorer, is prefaced by the author’s summary of the explorer’s life and expeditions, followed by a large general map showing the routes of their major journeys. The extracts that follow from their published journals (and those of other participants) are in each case from one representative expedition, though the visual materials used to illustrate them are drawn more widely and often includes others of their expeditions as well. The book as a physical object – an imposing 33 x 28 cm and 4 cm thick, with heavy hard covers, embossed titling, and satisfyingly thick pages weighing in at over 3 kg overall – at times seems almost to exert its own gravitational field. To add to the sense of an international event, both this and the earlier title were published simultaneously in French and English editions.

The book’s focus is on the British and American expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage (John Ross, Parry, Franklin), then in search of the last Franklin expedition (McClure, Rae, McClintock, and as organizer and inspirer, Jane Franklin), and finally making the first forays towards the North Pole (Kane, Hall and Nares). The inclusion of the much-loved but tragic figure of Joseph-René Bellot among the second group also gives an opportunity for justified pride in a French contribution to the Franklin search. Sagnières’s warmth, enthusiasm, and admiration for the people he writes about is palpable throughout, and as someone who has made some twenty-five Arctic expeditions on skis and sleds he has a far more direct understanding of these explorers’ efforts and experiences than most authors would ever be in a position to bring to the subject. He notes the shortcomings of outlook of some of the expeditions, particularly in relation to diet and travel, but entirely without the sarcasm, censoriousness or lack of generosity that has characterized much writing about these expeditions in the later twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The selection of extracts shows a deep familiarity with the original material – mostly the official accounts published after each expedition’s return. Although presented in chronological order as each expedition progresses, the brief extracts make no attempt to summarize the course or findings of the expedition, but instead have been imaginatively chosen to shine spotlights on a wide range of incidents, subjects and moods – animals and plants, icebergs and ice floes, food and hunger, meteorology and temperature, meetings and farewells with the Inuit and Inughuit, position-finding and direction-finding, instruments and record-keeping, map-reading and map-making, frostbite and scurvy, sleds and boats, hunting and fishing – that together provide a rich overview of the lives and personalities of each expedition.

But in the context of this book the text is really a backdrop to the main event, the illustrations. Most modern editions of expedition texts reproduce illustrations at a small size, or without their original colour, or sometimes omitted entirely. Here we have a chance to see a large selection of some 300 illustrations, most made by the expedition participants themselves at the scene or worked up after their return, and most at a much larger size than one would normally see them (including several double-page spreads), enabling us to appreciate details often overlooked or not visible in most reprints. Even when, despite the large size, I needed a magnifying glass to read the textual notes in the contemporary maps, even the smallest were all clearly legible – a tribute to the expert colour registration of the Italian printers, Musumeci. And in addition to illustrations from printed sources, the author has also sourced much of the artwork from archives – which most people would never have a chance to see otherwise – as well as, in the later chapters, some of the large and magnificent oil paintings by artists such as Frederick Church and William Bradford that did much to define the nineteenth-century public’s concept of the Arctic regions. For its value alone as an anthology and source-book of beautifully reproduced original visual material from and about nineteenth-century Arctic exploration, For Glory, Not Gold is worth its price.

Dancing Chief

Dancing Chief: The Tragic Life of Lieutenant Frederick F. Kislingbury

by Douglas W. Wamlsey

Reviewed by Frank Michael Schuster

Some thirty years ago, the name Douglas W. Wamsley was known only to those with an interest in the Arctic who read books from cover to cover, including the acknowledgments, illustrations and bibliography. Either the illustrations—which had not been seen elsewhere—came from his collection, or books, which were works that had been heard of at best, as they were scarcely to be found even in specialist libraries. The subjects of the articles in which his name appeared as a co-author or author were new even to experts. Otherwise, one could find only a few legal articles by him with titles incomprehensible to non-lawyers and with no connection to the Arctic. Clearly, he was a lawyer and collector with a passion for the Arctic. Wamsley remained an enigma. That was to change abruptly in 2009 with the publication of his highly acclaimed biography of Isaac Israel Hayes, in which he brought Hayes out of the shadow of his former expedition leader Elisha Kent Kane. In 2022, Big Wolf followed, another biography, this time on Frederick G. Schwatka, in which it becomes clear that this man was much more than just an adventurer who had found his way to the Arctic in the footsteps of Sir John Franklin, as he had been portrayed in most books about the lost Franklin Expedition.

In between, an article appeared in Arctic in 2014 on “The Arctic Exploits of Dr Octave Pavy”, the doctor of the US polar expedition of 1881–1884 under Lieutenant Adolphus W. Greely. The long-standing feud between the two men, which played a prominent role in Greely’s narrative and official reports as well as in later publications, has almost completely overshadowed and obscured Pavy’s image. Wamsley brought Pavy back into the spotlight and presented a far more complex picture of him than is found in most books and articles about the tragic expedition.

For those who still recall all this, it comes as no great surprise that Wamsley’s latest biography focuses on ‘a fringe player in the accounts of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition,’ a figure who continues to play scarcely any role in the literature on the expedition to this day. Lieutenant Frederick F. Kislingbury (1846–1884) was originally Greely’s second-in-command, but, like Pavy, he too fell out with his commander, an incident that overshadowed everything else.

Interestingly, however, it was not the Arctic expedition that first aroused Wamsley’s interest in Kislingbury. As stated in the acknowledgements—which, once again, are just as worth reading as the bibliography—it was “a field report of his 1880 engagement at the Musselshell River, Montana Territory, whilst stationed at Fort Custer.” This chance discovery was not only evidently purchased for his own collection, but “led to a more dedicated search that culminated in this book,” because Wamsley, even whilst working on his book about Schwatka, “was intrigued by the thought of other Arctic explorers, whose frontier experience was considerable but completely untold.”

Consequently, we first learn a great deal about the military service and family life of Fred Kislingbury, who was born in England and emigrated to the United States with his parents. He volunteered for the US Army for a short time during the American Civil War. Apparently bored by his clerical work, he returned to the regular army shortly after the war had ended, where his life was initially no more exciting. In 1866, he married Agnes Bullock, the sister of Seth Bullock, the famous first sheriff of the notorious Western town of Deadwood, Dakota Territory, during the Gold Rush, known from numerous Western films and documentaries. Fred had four sons with Aggie: Harry was born in 1867, Walter in 1869, Douglass in 1874 and Wheeler in 1876. He spent most of his time with his family in what was then still the Wild West. For the most part, he commanded the so-called Indian Scouts fighting on the side of the US Army in the various Indian wars. He even adopted their languages and cultures, as he regarded them as equals – something unusual for the time. The fact that they clearly held him in high regard is evident, among other things, from the way they liked him, allowed him to take part in their ceremonies and subsequently even gave him the name ‘Dancing Chief’. 

Kislingbury was also dispatched to Texas to lay the telegraph line, during which time he met Greely and became friends with him. After his wife died in 1878, he asked Greely if he could join him on his planned Arctic expedition. As this expedition did not then materialize, he remained on the frontier and married Aggie’s sister Jessie, who now also followed him to the West. When she too died at Fort Custer in 1880, the devastated Kislingbury asked Greely once more if he could join the expedition, which was now going forward as part of the First International Polar Year 1882–1883, initiated by Carl Weyprecht. The American expedition was to carry out magnetic, gravitational and meteorological measurements in the north of Ellesmere Island simultaneously with other stations worldwide. If time permitted, the expedition was also to continue the geographical and natural history exploration of the Arctic. This offered Greely, as he told a reporter, the opportunity to advance further north than anyone before him via the channel between Ellesmere Island and Greenland or along one of the two coasts, following in the footsteps of the American expeditions led by Elisha Kent Kane in 1853–1855 and Charles Francis Hall in 1871–1872, as well as the British expedition led by George Nares in 1875–1876. Admittedly, this was something ‘that Weyprecht sought to avoid with the International Polar Year program – individualistic, glory-seeking attempts at geographical firsts’ -- but no one could stop him.

Kislingbury entrusted his children to the care of his family or their godparents and set off northwards, presumably in the hope that, in a completely new environment following the death of his two beloved wives, he might find other, less gloomy thoughts.

Shortly after arriving at Lady Franklin Bay and establishing Fort Conger, Greely fell out with Pavy. He let the insubordination slide, however, as he could not do without the doctor, whilst his quarrel with Kislingbury led the latter—who felt out of place anyway—to quit the expedition, though tragically he did not reach the ship in time. He was therefore forced to stay, even though he no longer had an official role, “but even as an outcast he managed to contribute to the well-being of the expedition.” He was not only one of the expedition’s best hunters, but also collected scientific samples for the expedition during his solitary wanderings. When the supply ship failed to arrive as planned and the fort was abandoned, he even took command of a boat and sled. For as long as he could, he strove for the expedition’s welfare and remained optimistic, even as the expedition was slowly perishing on Pim Island further south, having unexpectedly found insufficient supplies on Littleton Island and at Cape Sabine.

Unlike Greely, Kislingbury did not return home alive. However, the controversy continued back home when rumors arose that Greely and the handful of survivors had only survived at the expense of outcasts such as Pavy and Kislingbury – which, as Wamsley demonstrates, is not true – whilst the accusation that cannibalism had even taken place cannot be entirely dismissed. Ultimately, this did not harm Greely’s career, and all four of Kislingbury’s children, for whom their father had worried so much, went on to achieve something – mostly with the railroads – even though Douglass’s attempts to follow in his father’s footsteps to the Arctic all ultimately failed.

This story is only partly new; there are certainly plenty of books on the Indian Wars and the Greely Expedition, though one need not be familiar with them, as the author focuses primarily on the life and family of Frederick F. Killingbury. The background information he provides is sufficient to understand nearly everything in the book.

Here and there, one might have wished for a paragraph or two more on the Indian Wars as historical background. Even if one is not American and therefore knows Indians mostly only from Hollywood films – having, unfortunately, heard nothing about Native American history at school as a child – Deadwood still rings a bell. However, it is somewhat difficult to keep track of the various wars and battles that are mentioned in passing, even if, like this reviewer, one read Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee as a teenager – which was decades ago now, though.

Elsewhere, too, there are occasional references in the text intended by the author as brief explanations which, whilst understandable to Americans of his generation, are likely to remain incomprehensible to younger readers. For example, he recounts what happened when the dog sledge expedition sent out by Greely to push further north along the north coast of Greenland than anyone had ever gone before reached its destination:

“With a touch of humour, Brainard carved the words ‘St 1860 x’, i.e., short for ‘started trade in 1860 with ten dollars’, the advertisement for ‘Drake’s Plantation Bitters’, a predecessor of the humorous ‘Burma Shave’ advertisements of another era.”

Perhaps some Americans still recall that between 1926 and 1963, the Burma-Vita company amusingly advertised its shaving cream on every highway across the country. As early as 1862, a certain Colonel Patrick Henry Drake had advertised his medicine in a similar manner, plastering the whole country with billboards bearing his enigmatic cryptonym at a time when secret messages were very much in vogue, not least because of the Civil War. Only when one realises that, with this act, Brainard declared this spot to be the end of a perfectly ordinary American road, does the humor become apparent.

A little more explanation and information regarding the origins of the First International Polar Year would not have gone amiss either. To describe Carl Weyprecht as a scientist is not entirely wrong; after all, in 1879 he did, based on his own experience, author a study on “The Metamorphoses of Polar Ice.” It was simply not for this reason that he had become the universally respected initiator of the Polar Year. Born in Hesse, in the heart of Germany, the captain of the Austrian Imperial Navy had, following a voyage in the summer of 1871 to the Barents Sea north-east of Spitsbergen, commanded the Austro-Hungarian North Polar Expedition 1872-1874, during which the archipelago named after the then Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph I was discovered. Although likely long known to the whalers and sealers of the Barents Sea, this discovery of land so far north was considered a sensation. This gave Weyprecht the attention he needed for his plans for international cooperation in the Arctic, the realisation of which he did not, however, live to see.

Such additions would be helpful in these cases, but they are not necessary.

Of course, Wamsley – as a glance at the bibliography reveals – is familiar with the relevant literature. However, he relies primarily on archival sources such as personal letters, diaries and reports. In addition to memoirs, he also draws on the contemporary press, but without taking into account the opinions and interpretations of the journalists. He is concerned solely with information and statements from those involved.

The fact that he pays virtually no attention to what others have written about the expedition is not merely because Kislingbury plays only a minor role in it. Rather, if one reads between the lines, their interpretations and judgments seem too clear-cut to him. His professional background as a lawyer likely plays a role here. Instead of taking a clear stance, he prefers, like a defense attorney, to let the statements of those involved speak for themselves. He merely draws attention to similarities or contradictions between what different people say, or what a single person says at different times. This also highlights the problematic nature of statements and memories, a point Wamsley illustrates in the appendix to his book using the discrepancies between the field diaries, later records and Brainard’s even later memoirs.

By leaving it to the readers, like a jury in court, to form their own verdict, he also avoids the problem that many other authors, consciously or unconsciously, identify with the main subject of the biography, although one cannot deny that the author harbors a certain sympathy for Kislingbury.

However, the fact that readers must think for themselves and form their own opinions while reading does not mean that the book is difficult to read. On the contrary, Wamsley’s restrained, almost laconic style makes it easy and a pleasure to read. Clearly reproduced, well-organised maps make it easy to get an overview. The photographs appear to be reproduced at their original size, which is not a problem, apart from in cases where they are half of a stereoscopic image. In those instances, they could easily have been slightly larger. The images are well chosen, and here too a picture is sometimes worth a thousand words; for when one compares the image of Kislingbury and his scouts with that of the Greely, it becomes clear why the two were bound to clash, even though they were initially quite fond of each other. The dust jacket, designed as a skilful collage, also brings together this highly readable book visually, so to speak.

But that’s not all: anyone who now picks up one of the many well-known books about the Greeley expedition to read it for the first time or again, because their interest has been (re)awakened, will hopefully read it with a clearer and more critical eye, and realize that much of what is written is not as straightforward as it appears.

That aside, Douglas Wamsley has, in any case, once again achieved his goal: the story of yet another ‘Arctic explorer, whose frontier experience was considerable’ is now no longer untold, and will hopefully find many interested readers.

A Gift Before Dying

A Gift Before Dying by Malcolm Kempt

New York: Crown, 2026

US$28 eBook

Reviewed by Lena Leimgruber Haraldsson

There is a wide sea of thrillers set in the Arctic, but Malcolm Kempt’s debut novel, A Gift Before Dying, is different. Most entries in the Arctic thriller genre lean heavily on established tropes: wildlife biologists fighting poachers in action-heavy plots like Alice Henderson’s A Blizzard of Polar Bears or high-stakes military tech mysteries such as Dale Brown’s Arctic Storm Rising. While these books use the frozen landscape as a dramatic, often hostile backdrop for heroism, Kempt’s interest in writing clearly stems from the environment itself, rather than choosing the Arctic simply to fit a thriller mold. Having worked as a criminal lawyer in the remote Arctic for almost two decades, Kempt writes with the weary authority of someone who has lived the reality of the Canadian North rather than someone who has researched it in a library.

The novel follows a tightly wound 41-chapter structure that alternates between two deeply damaged perspectives: Sergeant Elderick Cole, a “Southern” policeman haunted by a botched investigation in Alberta, and Maliktu Kullu, a ten-year-old Inuit boy disfigured by a childhood fire. The story begins with a grim discovery: the apparent suicide of sixteen-year-old Pitseolala in an unlit apartment in Cape Dorset. Cole, however, notices inconsistencies that suggest a staged scene. As Cole navigates the bureaucratic and physical hurdles of a remote investigation, Maliktu undergoes a spiritual journey, guided by visions of his dead sister to “kill the devil”responsible for her death.

Kempt’s portrayal of Inuit communities avoids the romanticized imagery often found in Northern fiction. Instead, he presents a “pressure cooker of social ills” driven by “[h]arsh weather, rampant substance abuse, lack of treatment resources, and pure isolation.” The lack of basic infrastructure is palpable; Cole’s smartphone becomes an “overpriced dictation machine” because there is no reliable cell service. The housing units are identical, overcrowded pre-fabricated units where “violence lingered as a potential solution to every problem.” Kempt describes a world where the “never-ending night” of winter is strangely comforting because, like the drifting snow, “it hid the ugliness around him.”

As a non-Inuit writer, Kempt approaches the depiction of Northern communities with notable care. At times, the descriptions carry a slight sense of obligation, as if the narrative pauses to ensure that readers unfamiliar with Arctic life fully grasp the structural conditions shaping it. Yet this impulse ultimately strengthens the novel rather than weakening it. The explanations are measured and respectful, and they help situate the story within the broader realities faced by many Northern communities. The issues Kempt depicts (overcrowded housing, strained infrastructure, substance abuse, high rates of suicide, the weight of isolation, to give just a few examples) echo widely documented experiences in Inuit regions. Importantly, these conditions are not framed as exotic tragedies of the Arctic but as complex social realities affecting both Inuit and non-Inuit residents of the North. In this way, the novel’s attention to detail feels less like exposition and more like a careful act of witnessing.

The environment is clearly not just a setting; it is a character that dictates the logic of life and death. The ground is so hard with permafrost that an excavator is required for a shallow grave, and the cold is so absolute that a body in an unheated apartment becomes frozen solid within hours. Kempt uses this environment to ground his foray into what might initially appear as magical realism. Maliktu’s connection to his sister transcends the psychological; he sees her face beneath the frozen water, her “eyes blank, her mouth gaped wide,” and later, in the room where she died, she physically interacts with him by talking to him, and he feels her phantom breath “hot and tangible on his skin.” Yet these moments do not feel like a literary flourish imposed from outside. Instead, they resonate with the long tradition of Inuit storytelling in which the spiritual and physical worlds coexist, and where the land, the sea, and the dead remain active presences in everyday life.

However, perhaps the most daring aspect of the novel is the narrator and main character, Sergeant Cole. He is a man in the throes of a downward spiral, self-medicating with blue and white pills and an alcohol problem to cope with the botched investigation that ruined his career and his family. His rage is often misplaced and terrifying; in a moment of extreme psychological pressure, he executes a chained, suffering dog in front of a group of children -- a choice that stays with the reader and forces a difficult reckoning with Cole’s character. 

The novel reaches a fever pitch in chapter 30, during an exorcism scene. As an evangelical preacher, Avon Desmond, attempts to cast out demons from a suicidal teenager, the room dissolves into a maelstrom of chanting and holy water. The tension of the community’s trauma explodes when Cole, disoriented by the noise and discomfort, discharges his weapon three times into the floor. His subsequent punch to the preacher’s chin is a visceral moment of a man finally breaking under the weight of burnout in a place that will “burn you alive if you let it.” The motif of burning alive functions both as a chilling metaphorical warning and a literal threat that bookends the novel's climax.

The meaning of the title, A Gift Before Dying, resonates throughout the narrative. It suggests that in a landscape defined by suffering, the gift is often a release from consciousness or trauma. Early on, Cole reflects that being able to sleep would be a gift and later, after a self-destructive outburst, he notes that losing consciousness was a gift. The gold cross Maliktu recovers is also considered a gift before dying, a token of protection Pitseolala may have intended for her brother. Ultimately, the gift is Cole’s final transition. In the final chapter, as he succumbs to his wounds he suffered during a fight with the antagonist and Pitseolala’s killer, he enters a spiritual iglu. There, he finds Pitseolala who takes his hand and blows out the flames of her lamp. It is a peaceful, spiritual ending that elevates the book from a standard procedural to a profound meditation on the Arctic soul.

A Gift Before Dying is a remarkable work of Arctic noir. Kempt’s prose is raw, capturing both the beauty and the quiet isolation of the North while exposing the jagged, unhealed wounds carried by the people who live there. The novel moves confidently between procedural investigation, psychological descent, and spiritual reckoning, creating a narrative that feels both grounded and hauntingly otherworldly. In doing so, Kempt elevates what could have been a conventional Arctic thriller into something far more resonant: a meditation on trauma, survival, and the fragile threads that bind communities together in one of the most unforgiving landscapes on earth. For readers who think they already know the Arctic thriller, Kempt’s debut is a necessary, and chilling, education.