Sir John Borrow ( 1764 - 1848 )Barrow was born the only child of Roger Barrow, a tanner in the village of Dragley Beck, in the parish of Ulverston, Lancashire.
He was a pupil at Town Bank Grammar School, Ulverston, but left at age 13 to found a Sunday school for the poor.
Barrow was employed as superintending clerk of an iron foundry at Liverpool. At only 16, he went on a whaling expedition
to Greenland. By his twenties, he was teaching mathematics, in which he had always excelled, at a private school in Greenwich
Barrow returned to Britain in 1804 and was appointed Second Secretary to the Admiralty by Viscount Melville, a post which he
held for forty years[2] – apart from a short period in 1806–1807 when there was a Whig government in power.[6] Lord Grey
took office as Prime Minister in 1830, and Barrow was especially requested to remain in his post, starting the principle that
senior civil servants stay in office on change of government and serve in a non-partisan manner. Indeed, it was during his
occupancy of the post that it was renamed Permanent Secretary. Barrow enjoyed the esteem and confidence of all the
eleven chief lords who successively presided at the Admiralty board during that period, and more especially of King
William IV while lord high admiral, who honored him with tokens of his personal regard.
In his position at the Admiralty, Barrow was a great promoter of Arctic voyages of discovery, including those of John Ross,
William Edward Parry, James Clark Ross and John Franklin. The Barrow Strait in the Canadian Arctic as well as Point Barrow
and the city of Barrow in Alaska are named after him. He is reputed to have been the initial proposer of Saint Helena as the
new place of exile for Napoleon Bonaparte following the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. Barrow was a fellow of the Royal Society
and received the degree of LL.D from the University of Edinburgh in 1821. A baronetcy was conferred on him by Sir Robert
Peel in 1835.He was also a member of the Raleigh Club, a forerunner of the Royal Geographical Society
Sir John Borrow was a victim of Mutiny on the Bounty the ship he was an admiral on.
