George Nares - British Arctic Expedition

British Arctic Expedition

Because of his previous experience in the Arctic, he was summoned from this assignment to take charge of another Arctic voyage in search of the North Pole in Discovery and Alert in 1875, the British Arctic Expedition. On this expedition, Nares became the first explorer to take his ships all the way north through the channel between Greenland and Ellesmere Island—now named Nares Strait in his honor—to the Lincoln Sea. Up to this time, it had been a popular theory that this route would lead to the supposed Open Polar Sea, an ice-free region surrounding the pole, but Nares found only a wasteland of ice. A sledging party under Albert Hastings Markham set a new record farthest north of 83° 20' 26"N, but overall the expedition was a near-disaster. The men suffered badly from scurvy and were hampered by inappropriate clothing and equipment. Realizing 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 H.M. Ships "Alert" and "Discovery" and published by Sampson, Low, Searle & Rivington of London.

Nares was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1876, received the founder's medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1877 and was awarded the Gold medal from Société de Géographie in 1879. These scientific awards were matched by an appointment as a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1876.