John Fairfax (rower)
| John Fairfax | |
|---|---|
| Born |
21 May 1937 Rome, Lazio, Italy |
| Died | 8 February 2012 (aged 74) Henderson, Nevada, United States |
| Occupation | Rower |
| Known for | First solo row across the Atlantic Ocean |
 John Fairfax and Sylvia Cook, 43:05, WNYC
|
|
|
Sylvia Cook, 12:42, Avaunt podcast |
John Fairfax (21 May 1937 – 8 February 2012) was a British ocean rower and adventurer who, in 1969, became the first person to row solo across an ocean. He subsequently went on to become the first to row the Pacific Ocean (with Sylvia Cook) in 1971/2.
Fairfax was born 21 May 1937 in Italy to an English father and Bulgarian mother. As a child he was expelled from the Italian Boy Scouts for opening fire, with a revolver, on a hut containing other Scouts. Soon after, he and his mother moved to Argentina where, aged thirteen, he left home to live in the jungle "like Tarzan", surviving by hunting and bartering skins with local peasants. Also as a teenager, he read of Frank Samuelsen and George Harbo's famous row across the Atlantic Ocean (then the only ocean to have been rowed) and knew that someday he would row across the Atlantic.
At the age of 20 Fairfax attempted "suicide-by-jaguar". He kept a revolver with him just in case he changed his mind which he did in the end and shot the jaguar and sold the skin. He was later apprenticed to a pirate and also briefly managed a mink farm.
In 1959 he flew to New York City and drove across America to San Francisco. When he ran out of money, Fairfax decided to return to his mother in Argentina by bike. He got as far as Guatemala and then hitchhiked on to Panama. After a brief spell as a sailor on a Colombian boat he returned to Panama where he fell in with pirates and ended up spending three years smuggling guns, whiskey and cigarettes. After a dramatic escape from the pirates and the authorities, he returned to Argentina on horseback.
...
Wikipedia