However, the Royal Geographical Society's Secretary (and later President) Sir Clements Markham was a former naval man who had served on one of the Franklin relief expeditions in 1851. He had accompanied Nares for part of the 1874–76 expedition, and remained a firm advocate for the navy's resuming its historic role in polar exploration. An opportunity to further this ambition arose in November 1893, when the prominent biologist Sir John Murray, who had visited Antarctic waters as a biologist with the "Challenger" Expedition in the 1870s, addressed the RGS. Murray presented a paper entitled "The Renewal of Antarctic Exploration", and called for a full-scale expedition for the benefit of British science. This was strongly supported, both by Markham and by the country's premier scientific body, the Royal Society. A joint committee of the two Societies was established to decide the form which the expedition should take. Markham's vision of a full-blown naval affair after the style of Ross or Franklin was opposed by sections of the joint committee, but his tenacity was such that the expedition was eventually moulded largely to his wishes. His cousin and biographer later wrote that the expedition was "the creation of his brain, the product of his persistent energy".