Vice-Admiral William John Samuel Pullen (4 December 1813 – 22 January 1887)[1] was a Royal Navy officer who was the first European to sail along the north coast of Alaska from the Bering Strait to the Mackenzie River in Canada.

[citation needed] His 1849 journey was one of the many unsuccessful expeditions to rescue Sir John Franklin and explore the Northwest Passage.

[2] In 1836, Pullen was enticed to leave the navy and go to South Australia as one of Colonel William Light's survey staff, arriving in the colony in August 1836.

He was employed in exploring and surveying the mouth of the Murray River, and may be regarded as the discoverer of Port Adelaide, into which he sailed on September 28, 1836, three months before the arrival of the first Governor.

He also surveyed part of the Lower Murray, Lake Alexandrina and Port Elliot, and did much to elucidate the geography of the South Australian coast.

[3] He returned to the navy in 1842, and was stationed on HMS Columbia surveying the Saint John River and the Bay of Fundy, being promoted to lieutenant in the process in 1846.

The Plover was a poor sailer, did not make rendezvous and wintered in Providence Bay, Siberia, where William Hulme Hooper made ethnographic observations.

From the river mouth he went upstream and left most of his exhausted crew at the Hudson's Bay Company post at Fort McPherson.

In 1855 Pullen was placed in command of HMS Falcon as a part of operations of the Crimean War against Russia forces in the Baltic Sea, and was promoted to captain the next year.