John Barrow

• Honorific Prefix — Sir • Name — John Barrow • Honorific Suffix — FRGS • Office — Second Secretary to the Admiralty • Predecessor — Benjamin Tucker • Successor — William Baillie-Hamilton • Born — 19 June 1764 • Birthplace — Dragley Beck, Ulverston, Lancashire, England • Died — 23 November 1848 • Place of death — London, Middlesex, England • Children — * Sir George Barrow • John Barrow • Peter Barrow • Occupation — Geographer, linguist, writer

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 the age of 13 to found a Sunday school for poor local children. 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 taught mathematics to George Thomas Staunton, son of Sir George Leonard Staunton, Bt; through Staunton's interest, he was attached on the first British embassy to China from 1792 to 1794 as comptroller of the household to Lord Macartney. He soon acquired a good knowledge of the Chinese language, on which he subsequently contributed articles to the Quarterly Review; and the account of the embassy published by Sir George Staunton records many of Barrow's valuable contributions to literature and science connected with China. Barrow ceased to be officially connected with Chinese affairs after the return of the embassy in 1794, but he always took much interest in them, and on critical occasions was frequently consulted by the British government. Some historians attribute the 'stagnation thesis' to Barrow; that China was an extremely civilized nation that was in a process of decay by the time of European contact.

• Illustration — The Castle at Cape Town in about 1800, painted by John Barrow In 1797, Barrow accompanied Lord Macartney as private secretary in his mission to settle the government of the newly acquired colony of the Cape of Good Hope. Barrow was entrusted with the task of reconciling the Boer settlers and the native Black population and of reporting on the country in the interior. In the course of the trip, he visited all parts of the colony; when he returned, he was appointed auditor-general of public accounts. He then decided to settle in South Africa, married, and bought a house in 1800 in Cape Town. However, the surrender of the colony at the peace of Amiens (1802) upset this plan. During his travels through South Africa, Barrow compiled copious notes and sketches of the countryside that he was traversing. The outcome of his journeys was a map which, despite its numerous errors, was the first published modern map of the southern parts of the Cape Colony. Barrow's descriptions of South Africa greatly influenced Europeans' understanding of South Africa and its peoples. William John Burchell (1781–1863) was particularly scathing: "As to the miserable thing called a map, which has been prefixed to Mr. Barrow’s quarto, I perfectly agree with Professor Lichtenstein, that it is so defective that it can seldom be found of any use".

• Illustration — The Arctic Council Planning a Search for Sir John Franklin by Stephen Pearce, 1851. Barrow's son John Barrow Jr. commissioned the painting. 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 – apart from a short period in 1806–1807 when there was a Whig government in power. 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 honoured 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. Barrow Strait, Cape Barrow, and Cape John Barrow in the Canadian Arctic, as well as Point Barrow and the former 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. He is also remembered for infamously declaring the newly invented electrical telegraph as being "wholly unnecessary" and greatly delaying its proposed adoption by the admiralty. 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. Barrow was subsequently one of the seven founding members of the Royal Geographical Society on 16 July 1830.

Barrow married Anna Maria Truter (1777–1857), a botanical artist from the Cape, in South Africa on 26 August 1799. The couple had four sons and two daughters, one of whom, Johanna, married the artist Robert Batty. His son George succeeded to his title. His second son, John Barrow (28 June 18089 December 1898), was appointed head of the Admiralty Records Office as a reward for developing a system for recording naval correspondence, and for rescuing documents dating back to the Elizabethan period. He published ten volumes of his travels, wrote biographies of Francis Drake and others and edited the voyages of Captain Cook among other works.

Barrow in his role as Second Secretary is portrayed as a character in Hornblower and the Crisis by C. S. Forester. He is portrayed by James Laurenson in the first season of AMC's supernatural horror anthology series The Terror.

• Crusades against Frost:Frankenstein, Polar Ice, and Climate Change in 1818 – Siobhan Carroll. • Barrow's Boys – Fergus Fleming (1998)

His recorded language was English. 4 children are recorded: John Barrow Jr. Sir George Barrow, 2nd Baronet, Johanna Maria Barrow and Peter Barrow.