Vice-Admiral Sir George Strong Nares KCB FRS (24 April 1831 – 15 January 1915) was a Royal Navy officer and Arctic explorer.

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.

[2] 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.

[1] During this time he was loaned to the Aetna-class ironclad floating battery Glatton under the command of Captain Arthur Cumming.

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.

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.

[1] His duties involved keeping the communications between Sydney and Cape York Peninsula in the furthest north point of Queensland open.

On the morning of 17 November, a procession of ships entered the canal, officially headed by the French Imperial yacht Aigle however Newport 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.

Captain 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.

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.

[1] 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.

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.

Nares died at home aged 83 at Kingston upon Thames on 15 January 1915, and was buried in Long Ditton churchyard in Surrey.