George Nares
Sir George Strong Nares KCB (born April 24, 1831 in Llansenseld, Wales , † January 15, 1915 in Surbiton , England ) was a British navigator , admiral and polar explorer .
Life
George Strong Nares was born the son of the British captain William Henry Nares in Llansenseld, near Abergavenny ( Monmouthshire ). He received his education at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich . In 1845 he joined the British Navy .
His first experience in the Arctic made Nares as a second mate on the HMS Resolute , a ship in Edward Belcher's fleet, which led a search expedition from 1852 to 1854 for the missing explorer John Franklin . Then Nares took command of the Challenger Expedition (1872–1876). Due to his arctic experience, however, he was ordered back and entrusted with another research trip: with the two ships HMS Discovery and the HMS Alert , he was supposed to find the North Pole in 1875 .
British Arctic Expedition
On this expedition he was the first to succeed in navigating the Kennedy Canal and the Robeson Canal , a strait only about 30 km wide in some places between Greenland and Ellesmere Island , which connects Baffin Bay with the Lincoln Sea . This sea route is now called the Nares Strait in honor of Nares .
At that time there was a theory that said the route traveled by Nares led into an ice-free zone of the Arctic Ocean , which should surround the pole (see theory of the ice-free Arctic Ocean ). Contrary to his expectations, Nares had to refute this theory, he found a frozen ocean. He sent a group with sledges to the north , which actually managed to set a new record: At 83 ° 20 'north latitude, the men of Nares reached the northernmost point that had ever been entered by humans. However, scurvy and inadequate equipment forced Nares to turn back. In 1876 Nares returned to the south realizing that he and his men would not survive another winter in the ice. In the course of this expedition, Pelham Aldrich reached the northernmost point of Ellesmere Island, Cape Columbia at 83 ° 6 'north latitude, which is today the northernmost point of Canada .
Nares has also made merits in surveying the Strait of Magellan and some Australian locations.
Honors
Nares is remembered today by numerous geographical names, such as the Nares Strait , which he traveled for the first time , Cape Nares , the western tip of Eglinton Island , the Nares Mountain , the Nares Lake and the Nares River in the Yukon Territory , the Mount Nares in the Antarctic , the Nares -Glacier on Heard Island in the Indian Ocean and Naresland , an island off the north coast of Greenland.
Publications
- The naval cadet's guide: or seaman's companion . (1860), later udT: Seamanship , 6th edition, 1882.
- Reports on Ocean soundings and temperatures , 6 parts, 1874–1875.
- The official report of the recent Arctic expedition , 1876.
- Narrative of a voyage to the Polar Sea during 1875–76 , 2 volumes, London 1878.
Web links
- [1] (English; detailed Nares biography)
- [2] (English; about the 1975/76 expedition on board the HMS Discovery )
- [3] (English; via HMS Alert )
Individual evidence
- ^ William James Mills: Exploring Polar Frontiers - A Historical Encyclopedia . tape 2 . ABC-CLIO, 2003, ISBN 1-57607-422-6 , pp. 448 .
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Nares, George |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Nares, George Strong |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | British admiral and polar explorer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 24, 1831 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Llansenseld, Wales |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 15, 1915 |
| Place of death | Surbiton , England |