General Notes

John Byron
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John Byron (November 8, 1723 – April 10, 1786) was a British vice-admiral. He was known as Foul-weather Jack because of his frequent bad luck with the weather.

Byron was the second son of the 4th Baron Byron. He joined the navy at a young age, accompanying Baron Anson on his circumnavigation as a midshipman. Byron's ship, HMS Wager, was shipwrecked on the coast of Patagonia, and the survivors had to make their way by boat to Rio de Janeiro. This episode was the basis of the novel The Unknown Shore by Patrick O'Brian which closely follows Byron's own account.

In 1760 he was in command of a squadron sent to destroy the fortifications at Louisbourg.

Between June 1764 and May 1766 Byron completed his own circumnavigation as captain of HMS Dolphin. In 1765 he took possession of the Falkland Islands on the part of Britain on the ground of prior discovery, and his doing so was nearly the cause of a war between Great Britain and Spain, both countries having armed fleets to contest the sovereignty of the barren islands. On this voyage, Byron discovered islands of the Tuamotus, Tokelau and the Gilbert Islands, and visited Tinian in the Northern Marianas Islands.

In 1769 he was appointed governor of Newfoundland. He was made Commander-in-chief of the British fleet in the West Indies in 1778 and 1779 during the American War of Independence. He unsuccessfully attacked a French fleet under the Comte d'Estaing at the Battle of Grenada in July 1779.

He was the father of John Mad Jack Byron, who in turn fathered the poet Lord Byron.




John was a naval man who served in the squadron of Lord Anson in 1740 was castaway and suffer ed incredible hardship for five years, of which he afterwards published a narrative. He wa s sent out upon a voyage of discovery to the Straits of Magellan in the year 1764 and was appointed Commander in Chief of his majesty's fleet in the West Indies in 1778. He resigned from the post in 1780.

On inheriting from a Berkeley Uncle he spent much money on re-building a country house at Pirbright in Surrey, England, which he named "Byron Lodge". He planted a mile long avenue of pine trees there which is to this day known as "The Admiral's Walk".

Owned a farm at Crondall in Hampshire.

WILDFIRE leaped about his cradle, as it were. Of a "dark and ominous type", says his German biographer, Karl Elze, were his immediate forbears. "Unbridled passions, defiant self-will, arrogant contempt for the accepted order of things, together with high endowments of energy -  these made an inauspicious heritage"; and his grandfather, by marrying a Cornishwoman,[1] ha d added to the cup a superfluous infusion of the Celtic melancholy - as notorious in our own days as was the Byronic variety in those of which I am to write. The grandfather was that Admiral John Byron who was known to his companions in service by the nickname of Foulweather Jack, because he never could make a voyage without encountering a hurricane. From. a word let fall by Mrs. Piozzi, who was an intimate friend of his wife, we gather that the Admiral made his hurricanes for himself when he was at home.[2] His first cousin, Sophia Trevanion, whom he married in 1748, gave him two sons and four daughters.[3] From the list of these, Julian a and John stand forth as the stormy petrels. Juliana qualified for the typical Byronic par t by marriage with her first cousin, William Byron. This was violently opposed by his father , the legendary "Wicked Lord" - otherwise William, fifth Baron Byron, hero of the Chaworth Duel tragedy. His dislike to the union brought about the devastation of the family property from which it never, in the Byron days, wholly recovered; for this fifth lord was so infuriated by the marriage of his son with one thus near in blood that - very nearly insane as he was , and to such extent justified of his wrath against the Byronic tendency to in-breeding - h e resolved to hand that heir a ruined heritage. The heritage was ruined, but the son never re ceived it. He died before the father in 1788; and his son, too, died in 1794,[4]when our Byron was six years old - leaving the child heir to the barony.

The admiral, next brother to William, fifth Lord Byron, was a distinguished naval officer, whose 'Narrative' of his shipwreck in the 'Wager' was published in 1768, and whose 'Voyage roun d the World' in the 'Dolphin' was described by "an officer in the said ship" in 1767. His eldest son, John Byron, educated at Westminster and a French Military Academy, entered the Guards and served in America.
A gambler, a spendthrift, a profligate scamp, disowned by his father, he in 1778 ran away with, and in 1779 married, Lady Carmarthen, wife of Francis, afterwards fifth Duke of Leeds, ne e Lady Amelia d'Arcy, only child and heiress of the last Earl of Holderness, and Baroness Conyers in her own right.