George Nares

Vice-Admiral Sir George Strong Nares (24 April 1831 – 15 January 1915) was a Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer. He commanded the Challenger Expedition, and the British Arctic Expedition. He was highly thought of as a leader and scientific explorer. In later life he worked for the Board of Trade and as Acting Conservator of the River Mersey.

Biography

Family He was born on 24 April 1831, the third son and sixth child of Commander William Henry Nares, a British naval officer, and Elizabeth Rebecca Gould, at Llansenseld, near Abergavenny in Monmouthshire. He was baptised at the church of St Bridget, Llansanffraid on 22 May. He married Mary Grant, the eldest daughter of a Portsmouth banker, on 22 June 1858. They had four sons and six daughters. Following a posting to HMS Havannah on the Australian station in 1848, during which he served as both midshipman and mate, he returned in 1851 and passed his lieutenant's exam in 1852. Glatton arrived in the Black Sea too late to see action.

Instructor and author He served as a lieutenant in charge of training cadets in , and from 1859, in her successor. During this time he wrote the best-selling book The Naval Cadet's Guide, which was also republished under the title Seamanship, and was regarded as the best manual of its day.

His next appointment was to the brand new , (The journal Nature (21 January 1915) tells that when Newport was at Malta in 1869 the chief engineer, who was anxious not to go to sea because he wanted to attend some function on shore with his wife, asked to be given forty-eight hours to take off the cylinder covers.) Captain Nares replied "By all means." The chief engineer was jubilant, but on the planned day of sailing, after the usual morning muster by division, the order was given "Hands make sail", and the ship sailed out of the harbour without the aid of the engines, much to the chagrin of the engineer staff. Nature reports this as an example of his competence under sail and that it "was a good lesson given with tact and judgement".

Among the ships following was the Newport captained by Nares, which would survey the canal a few months later. The Admiralty required a survey and report before it would allow the canal to be used by naval vessels. G.H. Richards, Hydrographer of the Navy joined Newport in January 1870. They traversed the canal in both directions, taking soundings and checking the navigation. They approved the canal, subject to completion of improvements that were already under way.

In recognition of his work in the Gulf of Suez, Nares was promoted to the rank of captain in 1869. He commissioned in 1871 for the Red Sea, and on the outward voyage the ship conducted studies of the water currents in the Straits of Gibraltar for William Benjamin Carpenter, a biologist who believed that density differences between water masses generated ocean currents.

Challenger expedition

Charles Wyville Thomson and the Royal Society of London obtained the corvette from the Royal Navy for a 3-year expedition of scientific discovery. Although much of the world was well charted, this extended only to the coastlines and to very shallow depths – largely depths significant to the safe navigation of ships. There was a widely held consensus that the oceans were in parts very deep, but almost nothing was known of the make up of the deep oceans, the submarine landscape, nor the life contained within the deep ocean. Challenger was equipped to measure much of this, being loaded with specimen jars, chemical apparatus, trawls and dredges, thermometers and water sampling bottles, sounding leads and devices to collect sediment from the sea bed. Great lengths of rope were provided to allow the sounding of deep oceans, and of Italian hemp alone she carried a total length of .

Nares was given command of the Challenger Expedition, a recognition of his experience in this field, but also of his scientific approach to surveying and exploration. His work with William Carpenter in Shearwater had been a key factor in the choice of commanding officer. His officers were all naval surveyors, and the team of civilian scientists, led by Charles Wyville Thomson. but overall the expedition was a near-disaster. The men suffered badly from scurvy and were hampered by inappropriate clothing and equipment. Realising that his men could not survive another winter in the ice, Nares hastily retreated southward with both his ships in the summer of 1876. Nares wrote an account of the expedition, Narrative of a Voyage to the Polar Sea during 1875–6 by H.M. Ships "Alert" and "Discovery" and published by Sampson, Low, Searle & Rivington of London. Nares Inlet, Ontario County of Nares in Queensland, Australia