Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 08.djvu/165

 toward toward circumstance with patience and contrivance, and dogged pathetic loyalty.

[Information kindly supplied by Mr. C. H. Firth of Oxford; authorities as above; Warburton's Prince Rupert; Clarendon State Papers; Carte's Collection of Original Letters and Papers.] 

BYRON, JOHN (1723–1786), vice-admiral, second son of William, fourth lord Byron, was born on 8 Nov. 1723. The date of his entry into the navy has not been traced. In 1740 he was appointed as a midshipman to the Wager storeship, one of the squadron under Commodore Anson, and sailed from England in her. After rounding Cape Horn the Wager was lost, 14 May 1741, on the southern coast of Chili, a desolate and inclement country. The survivors from the wreck separated, Byron and some few others remaining with the captain. After undergoing the most dreadful hardships, they succeeded in reaching Valparaiso, whence, in December 1744, they were permitted to return to Europe by a French ship, which carried them to Brest. They arrived in England in February 1745–6. Many years after, in 1768, Byron published a ‘Narrative, containing an account of the great distresses suffered by himself and his companions on the coast of Patagonia.’ It has often been republished, and supplied some hints for the shipwreck scene in ‘Don Juan,’ whose author compares the sufferings of his hero ‘to those related in my grand-dad's “Narrative,”’ though, indeed, the fictitious sufferings of Juan were trifling in comparison with those actually recorded by John Byron.

During his absence he had been promoted to be lieutenant; immediately on his arrival he was made commander, and on 30 Dec. of the same year was made captain and appointed to the Syren frigate. After the peace he commanded the St. Albans, one of the squadron on the coast of Guinea; in 1753 he commanded the Augusta, guardship at Plymouth; and in 1755 the Vanguard. In 1757 he commanded the America of 60 guns in the futile expedition against Rochefort; he afterwards cruised with some success on the coast of France, and in the following year, still in the America, served in the fleet off Brest under Anson. In 1760 he was sent in command of the Fame and a small squadron to superintend the demolition of the fortifications of Louisbourg, and while the work was in progress had the opportunity of destroying a quantity of French shipping and stores in the bay of Chaleur, including three small men-of-war. He returned to England in November, but continued in command of the Fame until the peace, being for the most part attached to the squadron before Brest.

Early in 1764 he was appointed to the Dolphin, a small frigate which, with the Tamar, was ordered to be fitted for a voyage to the East Indies. The Dolphin was sheathed with copper, and her rudder had copper braces and pintles; she was the first vessel in the English navy so fitted. Byron did not go on board her till 17 June. The Dolphin, with the Tamar in company, sailed from Plymouth on 2 July, when Byron hoisted a broad pennant, being appointed commander-in-chief of all his majesty's ships in the East Indies. At Rio they met Lord Clive, on his way out in the Kent, East Indiaman. Clive was anxious to take a passage in the Dolphin, as likely to get to India long before the Indiaman, but Byron managed to refuse him, possibly by secretly telling him the true state of the case; for in fact his commission for the East Indies and the orders which had been publicly sent were all a blind, and the real destination of the two ships was for a voyage of discovery in the South seas. The jealousy of the Spaniards seemed to render this elaborate secrecy a necessary condition of success. No one on board the ships had a suspicion of what was before them till after they had stood much further to the south than a passage to the Cape seemed to require. The true object of the voyage was then divulged; it was at the same time announced that the men were to have double pay, with such good effect that when shortly afterwards an opportunity occurred by a returning storeship, only one man accepted the commodore's permission for any one that liked to go home. In passing through the Straits of Magellan they had frequent intercourse with the natives of Patagonia, and they have recorded, as simple matter of fact, that these people were of very remarkable size and stature. Modern travellers, having been unable to find these giants, have assumed that the former accounts were false, either by intention or by misconception, and have spoken, on the one hand, of Munchausen-like stories, and, on the other, of the deceptive appearance of long robes and of the mistakes that may arise from seeing men at a distance on horseback. In the case of the officers of the Dolphin—with which alone we are now concerned—this last explanation is impossible; the statements are so explicit that they must be either true or wilfully false. The commodore, himself six feet high, either stood alongside of men who towered so far above him that he judged they could not be much less than seven feet, or he deliberately wrote a falsehood in his official journal, and his