Born November 8, 1723, Nottinghamshire, England
Died April 10, 1786, London, England

During the eighteenth century, political and commercial rivalries among European nations—including Spain, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and France—led to frequent outbreaks of war. These maritime powers often fought over possession of lands and wealth that still lay unclaimed in little-known parts of the world.

John Byron was a British naval officer whose career reflected these international colonial conflicts. As a young man, he joined a 1740 British expedition sent to attack Spanish territorial possessions in the Pacific; Byron was shipwrecked on the South American coast and suffered five years of hardships trying to make his way home. In 1764, as a British naval commander, Byron led a secret expedition into the South Atlantic Ocean to claim the strategically located Falkland Islands for Great Britain. While near the islands, he passed a French ship pursuing the same...