William Parker Snow

[2] Snow spent a brief period in the Royal Navy on board the Cherokee class brig-sloop HMS Griffon and was one of the prize crew of the slaver Don Francisco captured off Dominica in 1837.

He made an attempt to organise a return to Australia with three other young people including his younger sister and her husband (his wife's brother) but failed, and he was convicted of swindling in 1842 and jailed for a year.

On returning to England, he performed editorial and transcription work for William Johnson Neale and Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay.

A brother, George Henry Joel Snow (c. 1826–1904) was also a mariner, but spent his final years as a market gardener in Victoria, Australia.

On 7 January 1850, Snow was working as a writer in New York when he claimed to have had a paranormal vision of the whereabouts of the missing Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin.

Storm damage and problems with his men forced him to enter the Clarence River, New South Wales, a month later, and the expedition was ultimately abandoned.

Snow published a successful book, A Two Years' Cruise off Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, Patagonia and in the River Plate: A Narrative of Life in the Southern Seas, in 1857, but ultimately lost a lengthy legal case for compensation for wrongful dismissal against his former employers.

He acquired a small schooner, Triumver, which he renamed Endeavour, but a series of delays, ill-health and inadequate funds saw the expedition abandoned early in 1862, before it could leave Liverpool.

In the 26 April 1865 New York Herald Page 1 Column 4, was the following article: "Captain Parker Snow, the distinguished commander of the Arctic and Antarctic exploring expeditions, presented to Gen. Dix, with a view of their being interred in the coffin of the President, some interesting relics of Sir John Franklin's ill fated expedition.

His efforts met with mixed success and the last two decades of his life were spent in genteel poverty, aided by a small pension and donations from friends.

Though describing himself as a conservative, he publicly supported many radical causes including that of the Tichborne Claimant, Arthur Orton.