John Byron
Vice-Admiral | |
---|---|
Commands held | HMS Siren HMS Dolphin Leeward Islands Station |
Battles/wars |
|
Spouse(s) |
Sophia Trevanion (m. 1748) |
Children | 9 (incl. John) |
His grandsons include the poet Lord Byron and George Anson Byron, admiral and explorer, who were the 6th and 7th Baron Byron, respectively.
Early career
Byron was the second son of William Byron, 4th Baron Byron and Frances Berkeley, the daughter of William, 4th Baron Berkeley. After studying at Westminster School he joined the Royal Navy at the age of 14, making his first voyage aboard HMS Romney in 1738–40.[2]
Anson's voyage around the world
In 1740, he accompanied George Anson on his voyage around the world as a midshipman aboard one of the several ships in the squadron.
On 14 May 1741, HMS Wager under Captain Cheap (as Captain Dandy Kidd had died), was shipwrecked on the coast of Chile on what is now called Wager Island and Byron was one of the survivors.[3] The survivors decided to split in two teams, one to make its way by boat to Rio de Janeiro on the Atlantic coast; the other, including John Byron and the Captain, to sail north along the Spanish colonial coast.
Captain Cheap at Wager Island had a party of 19 men after the deserters rejoined the camp. This included the surgeon Elliot and Lieutenant Hamilton who had been cast adrift with him plus midshipmen John Byron and Alexander Campbell who had been in the barge. They rowed up the coast but were punished by continuous rain, headwinds and waves that threatened the boats. One night while the men slept on shore, one of the boats was capsized while at anchor and was swept out to sea with its two boatkeepers. One of the men got ashore but the other drowned. As it was now impossible for them all to fit in the remaining boat, four marines were left ashore with muskets to fend for themselves. The winds prevented them from getting around the headland so they returned to pick up the marines only to find them gone. They returned to Wager Island in early February 1742. With one death on the journey, there were now 13 in the group.
Martín Olleta, a Chono chieftain, guided the men up the coast to the Spanish settlements of Chiloé Island so they set out again. Two men died; after burying the bodies, the six seamen rowed off in the boat never to be seen again while Cheap, Hamilton, Byron, Campbell and the dying Elliot were on shore looking for food. Olleta then agreed to take the remaining four on by canoe for their only remaining possession, a musket. It is likely the party travelled across Presidente Ríos Lake in inland Taitao Peninsula, a lake Chile regarded as officially discovered in 1945.[4][5] Eventually they made it to be taken prisoner by the Spanish. The Spaniards treated them well and they were eventually taken to the inland capital of Santiago where they were released on parole. The Spaniards heard that Anson had been generous in the treatment of the prisoners he had taken and this kindness was returned.
Byron and the other three men stayed in
In England, the official court martial examined only the loss of the Wager in which Baynes, in nominal charge at the time, was acquitted of blame but reprimanded for omissions of duty. Disputes over what happened after the wreck were instead played out as Bulkeley and Cummins, Campbell, Morris, the cooper Young and later Byron published their own accounts, the last of which was the only one that in any way defended Cheap who had since died. Twenty-nine crew members plus seven marines made it back to England.
Byron's account of his adventures and the Wager Mutiny are recounted in The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (1768). His book sold well enough to be printed in several editions.
Byron was appointed captain of HMS Siren in December 1746.[3]
Seven Years' War
In 1760, during the Seven Years' War, Byron commanded a squadron sent to destroy the fortifications at Louisbourg, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, which had been captured by the British two years before. They wanted to ensure it could not be used by the French in Canada. In July of that year he defeated the French flotilla sent to relieve New France at the Battle of Restigouche.
Commodore, governor, and vice admiral
In early 1764 the British Admiralty determined that it would require a permanent naval settlement off the South American coast, in order to resupply naval vessels seeking to enter the Pacific via
Byron's two-vessel flotilla crossed the Atlantic over the winter of 1764 and made its way slowly down the South American coast. The Admiralty had ordered Byron to first seek
Between June 1764 and May 1766, Byron completed his own circumnavigation of the globe as captain of
In 1769 he was appointed governor of
He was promoted to
Byron was briefly Commander-in-Chief, North American Station from 1 October 1779.[12] He was made vice admiral of the white in September 1780.[3]
Family
On 8 September 1748 he married his first cousin Sophia Trevanion, daughter of John Trevanion of Caerhays in Cornwall and Barbara Berkeley, the sister of his mother.[13][14] They had two sons and seven daughters:[15]
- Frances Byron (1749–1823), later married Charles Leigh
- Sophia Byron (died in infancy)
- Isabella Byron (died in infancy)
- Juliana Elizabeth Byron (1754–88), later married her cousin Hon. William Byron (d. 1776, son of William Byron, 5th Baron Byron)
- Sophia Maria Byron (1755–1821), the 'maiden aunt' of the poet George Gordon Byron
- George Gordon Byron, the future 6th Baron Byron
- George Anson Byron (1758–93), noted navy officer and father of George Anson Byron junior, another admiral and explorer and later the 7th Baron Byron
- Charlotte Byron (died in infancy)
- Augusta Barbara Charlotte Byron (1762–1824), later married Admiral Christopher Parker
John was the brother of Hon. George Byron, married to Frances Levett, daughter of Elton Levett of Nottingham, a descendant of Ambrose Elton, Esq., High Sheriff of Herefordshire in 1618 and a surgeon in Nottingham.[16][17]
Death and legacy
According to a note written by his wife Sophia to their financial agent, John Byron died on 1 April 1786 at home in Bolton Row, London (not 10 April, as subsequent biographies claim).[18] On that date nine days later his remains were buried in the Berkeley family vault situated beneath the chancel of the Church of St Mary the Virgin, Twickenham.[19][20]
John's life was a great inspiration for his grandson the poet
In fiction
John Byron's experiences in the Anson voyage form the basis of the novel The Unknown Shore by Patrick O'Brian. It closely follows Byron's account in The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron (1768).
In The Dark Design by Philip José Farmer, John Byron is a crewmember of the schooner The Razzle Dazzle.
In The Wager by David Grann, John Byron's experiences aboard The Wager and while shipwrecked are central to the narrative of the story.
Bibliography
- Emily Brand, The Fall of the House of Byron (John Murray, 2020)
- James Gambier, "John Byron", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- Peter Shankland, Byron of the Wager (Collins, 1975)
- Violet Walker, The House of Byron (Quiller Press, 1988)
See also
- Baron Byron
- Cape Byron in Australia, named after Byron
- List of Newfoundland and Labrador lieutenant-governors
- List of people of Newfoundland and Labrador
- European and American voyages of scientific exploration
Notes
References
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. p. 183.
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. p. 78.
- ^ a b c d Douglas, W. A. B. (1979). "Byron, John". In Halpenny, Francess G (ed.). Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Vol. IV (1771–1800) (online ed.). University of Toronto Press. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
- ^ Vásquez Caballero, Ricardo Felipe. "Aau, el secreto de los chono" (PDF) (in Spanish). Archived (PDF) from the original on 23 March 2016. Retrieved 24 January 2019.
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(help) - . Retrieved 21 December 2019.
- ^ a b c Rea, Robert R. (October 1981). "Florida and the Royal Navy's Floridas". The Florida Historical Quarterly. 60 (2). Florida Historical Society: 187–191.
- ^ "Circumnavigation: Notable global maritime circumnavigations". Solarnavigator.net. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
- ^ Officer on Board the said Ship (1767). Voyage Round the World, in His Majesty's ship the Dolphin, commanded by the Honourable Commodore Byron. London: J. Newbery and F. Newbery.
- ISBN 9780958702126.
- ^ Haydn, Joseph (13 June 2008). The Book of Dignities: Containing Lists of the Official Personages of the British Empire ... from the Earliest Periods to the Present Time ... Together with the Sovereigns and Rulers of Europe, from the Foundation of Their Respective States; the Peerage of England and Great Britain Original 1851 Digitized by the University of Michigan. Longmans, Brown, Green, and Longmans. p. 279.
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. pp. 183, 187.
- ^ James Gambier, "John Byron", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
- ^ John Burke, Esq. (1834). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland Vol. I. Henry Colburn. p. 255. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
- ^ Sir Bernard Burke, LL.D. (1866). A Genealogical History of the Dormant, Abeyant, Forfeited, and Extinct Peerages of the British Empire. Harrison, 59, Pall Mall. p. 47. Retrieved 13 June 2018.
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. pp. 96–102.
- ^ Lodge, Edmund (1832). The Genealogy of the Existing British Peerage with Brief Histories of the Family Histories of the Nobility, Edmund Lodge, London, 1832. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
- ^ Mayo, Charles Herbert (1882). A Genealogical Account of the Mayo and Elton Families of the Counties of Wilts and Hereford, Charles Herbert Mayo, London, 1882. Privately printed by C. Whittingham. p. 16. Retrieved 20 July 2009.
thomas levett lichfield.
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. p. 231.
- ^ "At Twickenham Park, Lord John Berkeley". The Twickenham Museum. Retrieved 27 June 2015.
- ^ Brand, Emily. The Fall of the House of Byron. p. 232.
- ^ Brand, Emily (2020). The Fall of the House of Byron. John Murray. p. 77.
External links
- Works by John Byron at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about John Byron at Internet Archive
- Biography at Government House The Governorship of Newfoundland and Labrador
- Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia - HMS Dolphin Archived 10 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine
- Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography. 1900. .
- Hawkesworth, John; Byron, John; Wallis, Samuel; Carteret, Philip; Cook, James; Banks, Joseph (1773), An account of the voyages undertaken by the order of His present Majesty for making discoveries in the Southern Hemisphere, and successively performed by Commodore Byron, Captain Wallis, Captain Carteret, and Captain Cook, in the Dolphin, the Swallow, and the Endeavour drawn up from the journals which were kept by the several commanders, and from the papers of Joseph Banks, esq, London Printed for W. Strahan and T. Cadell, Volume I, Volume II-III