George Back

For the actor, see George Back (actor).

Sir George Back
George Back in 1833
Born	6 November 1796 – 23 June 1878 Stockport, Cheshire
Allegiance	United Kingdom
Service/branch	Royal Navy
Rank	Admiral
Battles/wars	Napoleonic Wars

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.^[1] In the following year, he was involved in fightings in the Bay of Biscay, until he was captured by the French.^[1] 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. He was appointed to command a search expedition for Sir John Ross, who had been missing in the Arctic since 1829. But in May 1834, news reached Back that Ross was safely back in England, so Back decided to undertake an exploratory mission.

Back led his own expedition in 1834 to complete the survey and explore the 500 mile course of the Great Fish River, which was later renamed the Back River in his honor.^[2][3] Richard King, M.R.C.S, was the ship's naturalist and surgeon and contributed appendices on meteorology and botany to Back's account of the expedition; he also wrote his own two-volume account of the expedition.^[4]

The Frozen Strait Expedition of 1836-37

In 1836, Back was promoted to captain by Order in Council- a very rare honor - and was given command of the converted bomb vessel HMS Terror for an expedition to map the uncharted northern part of Hudson Bay, with plans to cross the Melville Peninsula overland and explore the opposite shore. Terror was beset in the ice in September 1836 and 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.^[5] In the spring of 1837, an encounter with an iceberg further damaged the ship. It was not until July that the ice retreated sufficiently to allow HMS Terror to begin to head for home and the vessel was in a sinking condition by the time Back was able to beach the ship on the coast of Ireland at Lough Swilly.

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.^[1] 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.^[1]

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 niece 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..."^[6]

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).^[7]

• 

  HMS Terror (1813) as drawn by George Back

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  'Arctic Council Planning Search' by George Back

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  Coppermine mouth (1821) by George Back

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  'Expedition Doubling Cape Barrow' (1821) by George Back

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  'Fort Enterprise' by George Back

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  'Franklin's canoes in gale' by George Back

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  'Preparing an Encampment on the Barren Grounds' by George Back

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  'Resting Place in Winter' by George Back

Bibliography

Recent

• Steele, Peter (2003). The Man Who Mapped the Arctic: The Intrepid Life of George Back, Franklin's Lieutenant. Vancouver, B.C.: Raincoast Books ISBN 978-1-55192-648-3 
• Back, George (1994). C. Stuart Houston (editor). I.S. MacLaren (commentary). Arctic Artist: The Journal and Paintings of George Back, Midshipman with Franklin, 1819-1822. Montreal; Buffalo: McGill-Queen's University Press ISBN 978-0-7735-1181-1 

Historical

• Back, George (1823). Canadian Airs, Collected by Captain George Back, R.N. during the Late Arctic Expedition under Captain Sir John Franklin, with Symphonies and Accompaniments by Edward Knight, Junior. The words by G. Soane, and J.B. Planché. London: J. Power. OCLC 181890333 
• Back, George (1836). Narrative of the Arctic Land Expedition to the Mouth of the Great Fish River, and along the Shores of the Arctic Ocean, in the Years 1833, 1834 and 1835. Re-print edition Adamant Media Corporation (31 January 2002) ISBN 978-1-4021-6098-1. Scanned facsimile
• Ross, J, Back, G. & Williams, E. (1835). Narrative of the recent voyage of Captain Ross to the Arctic regions in the years 1829-30-31-32-33, and a notice of Captain Back's expedition; with a preliminary sketch of polar discoveries, from the earliest period to the year 1827.. New York: Wiley & Lond. OCLC 74413181  Scanned facsimile
• Back, George (1838). Narrative of an Expedition in HMS Terror, Undertaken with a View to Geographical Discovery on the Arctic Shores, in the Years 1836-37. London, J. Murray. OCLC 1275534 

External links

• Biography at the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online
• George Back Collection from the National Archives of Canada
• Illustrations by George Back

v t e Royal Navy Arctic Exploration Expeditions Coppermine Expedition of 1819–1822 · Franklin's lost expedition · McClure Arctic Expedition · McClintock Arctic Expedition · British Arctic Expedition People Pelham Aldrich · Horatio Thomas Austin · George Back · Frederick William Beechey · Edward Belcher · David Buchan · Richard Collinson · Samuel Gurney Cresswell · Francis Crozier · John Franklin · Henry Parkyns Hoppner · Edward Augustus Inglefield · Henry Kellett · Skeffington Lutwidge · George Francis Lyon · Albert Hastings Markham · Francis Leopold McClintock · Robert McClure · George Mecham · Arthur Fleming Morrell · George Nares · Erasmus Ommanney · Sherard Osborn · William Edward Parry · Constantine Phipps, 2nd Baron Mulgrave · James Clark Ross · John Ross · Henry Frederick Stephenson Ships Alert · Assistance · Blossom · Carcass · Discovery · Dorothea · Enterprise · Erebus · Fury · Griper · Hecla · Herald · Intrepid · Investigator · Pioneer · Plover · Racehorse · Resolute · Terror

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