Byron’s Journal of his Circumnavigation, 1764-66

1964

Journals G161 H2 Ser. 2 no. 122

Cambridge: Published for the Hakluyt Society at the University Press

This map was first published in 1694 in an account of a journey south by English navigator, Sir John Narborough (1640-88), who sailed through the Straits of Magellan in 1670. It was consequently used by other navigators including John Byron (1723-86). In July 1764, naval officer Byron left England in the copper-bottomed Dolphin, under the pretence of sailing for the East Indies. After reading his ‘secret instructions’, Byron ‘threw them overboard’, sailed across the Pacific, and went looking for the ‘half-historical, half-mythical’ Solomon Islands – he never found them. He returned to England in May 1766, having made the fastest round the world trip ever.