George Nares Vice - Admiral Sir George Strong Nares KCB FRS ( 24 April 1831 – 15 January 1915 ) was a British naval officer and Arctic explorer . He commanded the first ship to pass through the Suez Canal , the " Challenger " Expedition and the British Arctic Expedition . He was highly thought of a leader and a scientific explorer . In later life he worked for the Board of Trade and as Acting Conservator of the River Mersey , and died in 1915 aged 83 . 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 . His two youngest sons , George Edward Nares ( lieutenant , d . 1905 ) and John Dodd Nares ( vice - admiral , d . 1957 ) entered the Royal Navy . Education and early service in the Royal Navy . He was educated at the Royal Naval School in New Cross , and in 1845 joined the Royal Navy aboard , an old battleship captured from the French . Following a posting to 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 . First Arctic experience . While returning to England in " Havannah " in 1851 , Nares had met Commander George Henry Richards , a future Hydrographer of the Navy , who had suggested he apply to Sir Edward Belcher for a place on his search for Sir John Franklin . Nares was accepted as the second mate of , and thus gained valuable early experience of the Arctic during the 1852 - 1854 expedition . Gunnery specialist . In 1854 Nares received his promotion to lieutenant and specialised as a gunnery officer . He joined the new battleship in 1854 , including service in the Mediterranean during the Crimean War . During this time he was loaned to the under the command of Captain Arthur Cumming . " Glatton " arrived in the Black Sea too late to see action . Cadet 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 . He was promoted to commander in 1862 and took command of the training ship in September 1863 . Surveyor . His next ship was the ageing 4 - gun wooden paddle sloop , which he commanded from 1865 . Although he had served in the steam - assisted " Conqueror " over ten years previously , this was his first paddle steamer , and in a further departure , she was employed in surveying duties on the east coast of Australia . His duties involved keeping the communications between Sydney and Cape York in the furthest north point of Queensland open . On the long journeys between he conducted surveys of the Great Barrier Reef . The county of Nares in Queensland was named after him . His next appointment was to the brand new , which he commissioned and took to the Mediterranean for survey work , including a survey of the Gulf of Suez , accessed by the newly opened Suez Canal . The Suez Canal opened in November 1869 , and although the French Imperial yacht " L ' Aigle " was officially the first vessel to pass through the canal , " Newport " , commanded by Nares , actually passed through it first . On the night before the canal was due to open , Nares navigated his vessel , in total darkness and without lights , through the mass of waiting ships until it was in front of " L ' Aigle " . When dawn broke the French were horrified to find that the Royal Navy was now first in line and that it would be impossible to pass them . Nares received both an official reprimand and an unofficial vote of thanks from the Admiralty for his actions in promoting British interests and for demonstrating such superb seamanship . 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 181 miles ( 291 km ) . 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 . " Challenger " spent a year in the Atlantic and after turning east in early 1874 she turned south in the Indian Ocean , visiting the Prince Edward , Kerguelen , and Heard islands . She reached as far south as 66°40 ' S 78°22 ' E before reaching the ice pack . In the process she became the first steam vessel to cross the Antarctic Circle . Not all similar expeditions had been so successful , and in particular the easy relations between the scientific gentlemen and the naval officers was a testament to the sure leadership of George Nares . It was therefore a measure of his success as the commander of a scientific expedition that he was recalled in November 1874 to lead a similar but more arduous expedition at the opposite end of the earth . 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 . Later Royal Naval career . In 1878 he was appointed in command of " Alert " , his ship from the Arctic expedition , in which he surveyed the Strait of Magellan . He left the ship on 11 March 1879 , and from 1879 to 1896 was employed in the harbour department of the Board of Trade . During this period he retired from the Royal Navy , on 24 April 1886 . He was promoted on the retired list twice , firstly in 1887 to rear - admiral , and secondly in 1892 to vice - admiral . Later work . After leaving the Board of Trade in 1896 he became a conservator of the River Mersey , a post which he held until 1910 . He was a member of the ship committee for Scott ' s Antarctic expedition . His wife Mary died in 1905 . Death . Nares died at home aged 83 at Kingston upon Thames , Surrey , on 15 January 1915 and was buried in Long Ditton churchyard on 19 January . Legacy . Among others , the following features are named after him :