George Back Admiral Sir George Back FRS ( 6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878 ) was a British naval officer , explorer of the Canadian Arctic , naturalist and artist . Career . Back was born in Stockport . As a boy , he went to sea as a volunteer in the frigate HMS " Arethusa " in 1808 and took part in the destruction of batteries on the Spanish coast . In the following year , he was involved in fightings in the Bay of Biscay , until he was captured by the French . Back remained a prisoner until the peace of early 1814 and during this time , practised his skills as an artist , which he later put to use in recording his travels through the Arctic . Following his release , Back served on HMS " Akbar " and HMS " Bulwark " as a midshipman before volunteering to serve under John Franklin in his first expedition to the Arctic in 1818 . Back also served under Franklin in his two overland expeditions to survey the northern coast of North America , first on the Coppermine Expedition of 1819 – 1822 - when Back was responsible for all the surveying and chart making - and then a similar expedition by the MacKenzie River in 1824 - 1826 , during which time he was promoted first to lieutenant and then to commander in 1825 . Lacking appointment to a ship , Back was unemployed on the half - pay list , from 1827 to 1833 . Back River Expedition . By 1832 nothing had been heard of the Arctic explorer John Ross since 1829 and plans were made to find him . Back proposed to take fur trade routes to the Great Slave Lake and follow the Great Fish River northeast to Ross ' s probable location . No white man had ever seen this river but it was known from Indian reports ( it was later named the Back River ) . He left England in February 1833 , reached the Great Slave Lake in August where George McLeod of the Hudson ' s Bay Company had built winter quarters at Fort Reliance at the eastern end of the lake . He located the river on 29 August and returned to the fort to winter . In March 1834 he received a packet of letters saying that Ross was back in England and telling him to explore the coast from Ross ' s King William Land to Franklin ' s Point Turnagain . This was the main unknown region , along with a few hundred miles eastward from Point Barrow and the area around King William Island which was completely misunderstood . He set out on 7 June 1834 , passed Artillery Lake and Clinton - Colden Lake and reached the river on 28 June . He ran east down a river in the barren grounds with 83 rapids but only one portage . On 23 July he reached salt water at Chantry Inlet . He explored the inlet , saw King William Island to the north and then unheroicly but wisely turned back . He reached Fort Reliance on 27 September 1834 and England on 8 September 1835 . The expedition ' s naturalist was Richard King who contributed appendices on meteorology and botany to Back ' s account of the expedition ; he also wrote his own two - volume account of the expedition . [ 1 ] The Frozen Strait Expedition of 1836 - 37 . In 1836 Back was promoted to captain by Order in Council , a rare honour . The goal this time was the northern end of Hudson Bay at either Repulse Bay or Wager Inlet . From there he would drag boats overland to seawater and sail the unknown coast west to the Back River and Franklin ' s Point Turnagain . These were the two easternmost known points on the north coast west of Hudson Bay . The area between them and between the Back River and Hudson Bay was unknown . ( In fact , 60 miles northwest of Repulse bay is the cul - de - sac of the Gulf of Boothia . To reach the Back River he would have had to drag his boats 250 miles west - northwest . ) He was given command of the converted bomb vessel HMS " Terror " with a crew of 60 and provisions for 18 months . He left in June 1836 which was late in the season and because on contrary winds had to be towed by steamship all the way to the Orkney Islands . He reached Hudson Strait on the first of August and by the end of August the " Terror " was beset by ice somewhere east of Frozen Strait . It remained icebound for 10 months : at one point the " Terror " was pushed 40 feet up the side of a cliff by the pressure of the ice . Several times preparations were made to abandon ship . Scurvy appeared in January and three men died of it . In the spring of 1837 , an encounter with an iceberg further damaged the ship . Sometimes the pressure of the ice was enough to force turpentine out of the planks . The ship drifted with the ice south along Southampton Island and then east toward Hudson Strait . It was not until July that the ice retreated sufficiently to allow HMS " Terror " to head for home . Soon a large mass of ice frozen to the vessel broke off causing the remaining ice to tip the ship on its side until the ice was hacked off . The vessel was in a sinking condition by the time he was able to beach the ship on the coast of Ireland at Lough Swilly . ' There was not one on board who did not express astonishment that we had ever floated across the Atlantic ' Although a number of Arctic explorers allowed their ships to be frozen in harbors for the winter , this seems to be the only case of a ship being caught in offshore ice . Its survival is a tribute to the strength of bomb vessel s in Arctic service . Retirement from the Royal Navy . Poor health caused Back to retire from active service . He was made a Knight Bachelor on 18 March 1839 , and maintained an interest in Arctic exploration for the rest of his life . In 1859 , he was nominated a rear - admiral . Back served as an advisor to the Admiralty during the search for John Franklin ' s lost expedition , and as vice - president of the Royal Geographical Society , having received its gold and silver medal . Although nominally retired , Back remained on Admiralty List and , based on seniority , he was promoted to vice - admiral in 1863 and finally admiral in 1876 . In spite of the high regard in which he was held in Great Britain and the many honors he received , Back had a history of being disliked and distrusted by many of the people he worked with in the Arctic , including Franklin . He was variously criticized for being rude , a weak leader , selfish , sycophantic , and quarrelsome . Later in life he gained a reputation for being a dandy and a womaniser . In 1846 , he married the widow of Anthony Hammond . He is buried in the Kensal Green Cemetery , London . Back as artist . George Back was an accomplished artist . A watercolor of an iceberg , believed to have been painted by Back following his 1836 - 37 expedition , sold at auction on 13 September 2011 for $ 59 , 600 , despite its being unsigned and undated . Experts at the prestigious London auction house Bonhams credited the watercolor to Back , claiming it had been presented by Back to his sister Katherine Pares , and thence descended through her family . The auction house opined that the scene surrounding the towering iceberg appears to match a description in Back ' s Narrative of an Expedition in H . M . S . Terror ( 1838 ) when the " Terror " was in the Davis Strait ( between Canada and Greenland ) that reads " in the evening ( of 29 July 1836 ) when the weather cleared . . . we observed an enormous berg , the perpendicular face of which was not less than 300 feet high . . . " Works . Beck drew ' HMS Terror Thrown Up By Ice ' ( 1813 ) . Beck drew the portrait ' A Buffalo Pound ' ( 1823 ) , which was later reworked into an engraving . He painted the watercolour ' Winter View of Fort Franklin ' ( 1825 - 6 ) . Bibliography . Recent Historical