Bastards of the fleet

Michael Taube

JOHN BYRON IS PART OF BRITISH naval folklore. The son of nobility and Lord Byron’s grandfather, he served in the Royal Navy as an officer, captain and vice-admiral. He was nicknamed “Foul-Weather Jack” due to his uncanny ability to confront terrible weather conditions on the high seas, and was immortalised in a 1759 portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds. Byron had another unusual claim to fame. He was a midshipman aboard the HMS Wager, a square-rigged sixth-rate vessel that was wrecked on the south coast of Chile in 1742 and witnessed a mutiny. Byron wasn’t a mutineer, but he had a bird’s-eye view: his account was included in his 1768 autobiography, The Narrative of the Honourable John Byron. David Grann, one of America’s finest authors and long-form journalists, came across Byron’s…

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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, August - September 2023

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