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 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 to cast a shadow over Parry’s life and his 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, before the family handed over their archives to the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI) in Cambridge, she published a biography of her great-great-grandfather.
But that was more than half a century ago. So one was naturally curious to see what new insights Ware’s 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. 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. 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. 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).
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 really surprising. The fact that Parry, during his four years as the 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—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, the son of a doctor who was 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 Minister, 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 just as unconvincing as the 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 would have ended up either where it actually met its demise, or where, years later, McClure’s expedition also nearly perished. However, Ware is just as uninterested in the precise circumstances of McClure’s expedition as he is in the current scientific 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—on which Parry was his second-in-command—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 than those with the Soviet Union during the space race 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—which did not originally come from him—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.
As a British author with a degree in naval history and a dissertation on the early 19th century, he 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.
Ware’s assertion that Parry’s work as an administrative official in Australia from 1829 onwards 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.
John Ross’s nephew James took part in the controversy in 1818 over whether Lancaster Sound was the entrance to the Northwest Passage or merely a bay. He sided against his uncle with Parry, with whom he subsequently made several further voyages to the Arctic. However, 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.
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—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.
The argument put forward by other authors 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.
What the author and publisher should certainly do, should there ever be a second edition, is: 1. To correct the many factual errors, by no means all of which have been mentioned here; 2. 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 3. 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.
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