Sir John Barrow

(19 June 1764 – 23 November 1848) was an English statesman and writer. Barrow’s Boys – Fergus Fleming (1998) “For 30 years beginning 1816, the British Admiralty’s John Barrow and his elite team charted large areas of the Arctic, discovered the North Magnetic Pole, were the first to see volcanoes in the Antarctic, crossed the Sahara to find Timbuktu and the mouth of the Niger – John Ross, John Franklin, William Edward Parry and others.” In 1804 he was appointed Second Secretary to the Admiralty by Viscount Melville, a post which he held for forty years. His life and work are commemorated in Ulverston by Sir John Barrow’s Monument on Hoad Hill, overlooking the town. It was built in 1850 and was restored in 2009.