John Fairfax

John Fairfax (21 May 1937 – 8 February 2012) was a British ocean rower and adventurer who, in 1969, rowed across the Atlantic and 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 and 1972. Early life Fairfax was born on 21 May 1937 in Rome, Kingdom of 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 considered suicide by confronting a jaguar. Changing his mind, he shot the animal and sold its skin. Subsequent activities included stints as an apprentice pirate and the running of a mink farm. Travels in the Americas