John Byron

Vice-Admiral John Byron was a British naval officer and explorer whose difficult voyages earned him the nickname ‘Foul-weather Jack’. As a young midshipman he survived the wreck of HMS Wager during George Anson’s circumnavigation.

Byron later led a voyage around the world and served in the American Revolutionary War. His published account of shipwreck, mutiny and survival influenced later maritime writing, including works by his grandson, the poet Lord Byron.

In David Grann’s The Wager, Thirty men eventually reached Brazil in a makeshift vessel and presented themselves as heroic survivors, only for Cheap, midshipman John Byron and two companions to arrive later in Chile with accusations of mutiny and murder.