Sir John Barrow

Sir John Barrow (1764–1848) was an English statesman, traveler and writer. Born to a poor family at Ulverston in Lancashire, he taught mathematics and then served as comptroller of the household on Lord Macartney's embassy to China in 1792 to 1794, which he described in Travels in China (1804). He later accompanied Macartney to the Cape of Good Hope and traveled in southern Africa. For some forty years he was Second Secretary to the Admiralty, where he championed Arctic exploration and the search for the Northwest Passage, and he was a founder of the Royal Geographical Society. He also wrote The Mutiny of the Bounty.