Army veteran who rowed Atlantic for charity says ‘there’s a direct correlation between suffering and donations’

An army veteran who has just completed a mammoth 3,332 nautical mile row across the Atlantic and raised £106,000 for a military mental health charity is setting his sights on running from Beijing to London, saying: “If you want to raise big sums of money, you’ve got to take on big challenges.”

Jack Jarvis, 31, from Southampton, spent 56 days rowing from New York to the UK to break world records, challenge his body and mind, and “raise money for a great cause” following his departure from the army in February 2025.

He’d already become the first person to row from mainland Europe to mainland North America solo and unsupported after completing a 111-day row in March 2022, but decided to ramp up the challenges after a freak skydiving accident “internally amputated” his leg.

Now, Jack is training to run a 13,000-mile ultramarathon from Tiananmen Square in Beijing to Trafalgar Square in London, having only just reached land on his second world-record-breaking row across the Atlantic.

“If I want people to donate their hard earned cash to me, I want to do something big so they feel like they’re getting their money’s worth,” Jack told PA Real Life.

“Also, there’s a direct correlation between suffering and donations that we noticed on the last row. Every day we’d had a really tough day, the donations seemed to go up!”

Jack, who has “always had that sense of adventure” had served in the British Army for 14 years, having joined up at the age of 16, and was planning his departure before a catastrophic skydiving accident in May 2023 left him needing to learn how to walk again.

“The first half of the skydive went fine, went all to plan,” he said.

“And then my leg got tangled as my parachute deployed, flipped me upside down. I internally amputated my leg – you’ve got four major ligaments in your knee, and my LCL was the only one left intact.

“I managed to get my leg free, so I didn’t die, which is great! It took 18 months to rehab that. It’s like learning almost how to walk again.”

Just 18 months after his accident, Jack embarked on a 40-mile ultramarathon in 2024, keen to satiate his appetite for adventure. Feeling fit and back on the horse, so to speak, he set his sights on his next challenge: a second Atlantic Ocean row, following his record-setting solo, unsupported crossing in 2021.

Setting off from the Liberty Landing Marina, near the Statue of Liberty, on June 19, Jack, along with friends Adam Radcliffe, David “Brucey” Bruce, and Sam “Nutty” Edwards, began their attempt to become the fastest team in history to row across the North Atlantic: over 3,500 miles from New York to the UK, aiming to complete the same route that the ill-fated Titanic never could.

It was a personal challenge of mental and physical fortitude, as well as an opportunity to raise money for Head Up – a charity which supports UK Armed Forces personnel through mental health challenges. The team set out to raise £50,000, but as of September 2025 they’ve raised nearly £107,000.

Jack and his team inherited a boat from a friend that had been abandoned four days into an ocean crossing, just off the coast of Tenerife. The boat had spent eight months “bobbing around the Atlantic”, waiting to be retrieved, and Jack suggested that, when the boat makes landfall, he bring it to New York and row it back to the UK.

The ocean rowing boat washed up on the Bahamas, and Jack and his crew fixed it up, transported it to New York, and pushed off for the Atlantic crossing on June 19. Everything they needed for the 60-day crossing was on board – food, water, supplies and equipment, and they began the gruelling task of rowing in shifts towards their destination.

“You work a standard routine of three hours on, three hours off,” Jack explained.

“So two of you will be rowing for three hours, then you’ll be resting in the cabin. But you’ve also got to do stuff like make food, comms checks, check with our weather router, make sure we’re all okay, any navigation changes.

“So 12 hours of rowing a day, you probably survive off about five to six hours of sleep a day. And you just do that every day, until you hit land.”

But it wasn’t all plain sailing (or rowing). On the eighth day of the trip, having covered just 250 nautical miles, the boat was struck by a “big monster wave” and capsized, which Jack said “was probably one of the lowest points”.

“Me and Adam were on deck when we saw a big monster wave, probably about 12 feet,” he said.

“You’ve got, like, three seconds to react – I was like: ‘F*** me!’

“This wave just absolutely nailed us. Flips the boat upside down… Under the boat, I don’t know what way is up.”

Luckily, Jack and Adam were tethered to the boat so avoided drifting out to sea, and it wasn’t long before Jack could “see the light – the light of the sky, by the way. I didn’t die!”

He managed to get eyes on Adam – “I’m like: ‘Well, happy days, he’s alive’” – and both men were able to return to the upright boat.

Unfortunately, some water did get into the cabin thanks to a vent that was left open, breaking some key pieces of kit. The deck repeater, which helps the crew navigate, the compass light, and the AIS – an early warning system for large incoming ships – were all damaged.

“We had a couple of ships come past at like, 300 metres, and you’re like: ‘They didn’t have a clue we were there!” Jack said.

Thankfully, no other kit or food was damaged – although Jack noted that Brucey and Nutty both lost a shoe each – thanks, he joked, to their lacklustre approach to keeping their kit tidy.

Of course, there were some major highlights, too.

“We broke the 24-hour record twice: the world record for the most nautical miles rowed in 24 hours,” Jack said.

“On the first day we broke it, which was like the 11th day (of the trip), we did 135 nautical miles. Then the day after we did 140 nautical miles.

“The old record was 116, so we absolutely smashed it.”

Jack’s second favourite day was when he saw fin whales – the second largest animals on the planet.

“They probably came within about five, 10 metres of the boat, three of them,” Jack said.

“They’re absolutely huge!”

The feeling of being back on solid land after 60 days of rowing was, naturally, euphoric for the crew. They landed in the Isles of Scilly, off the coast of Cornwall, and soon after did a celebratory staged landing in Southampton.

“The Scilly Isles landing was great,” Jack said.

“Two o’clock in the morning, 10 people stayed up, including the Deputy Harbour Master in St Mary’s Harbour. What a guy, and what a whole little community they’ve got there.

“They prepared us a roast chicken, a couple of pasties, juice, a few cans of Stella as well, a cup of tea. It sounds like a real random buffet, but it was good!”

“To say we did it – because you put a lot of pressure on yourselves to be those guys to achieve what we set out to, raise £106,000 for a military charity – it was phenomenal,” he added.

After a “pretty wild two weeks” of recovery, going to the Lost Village music festival, a stag do, and catching up with friends and family, Jack is “starting to feel a lot better now” and has his sights firmly set on his next challenge: a 13,000-mile run from Beijing to London, supported by the Huel Limit Seeker Fund. He plans to raise money for BrainsTrust in memory of his grandad, who died of a brain tumour in 2007.

Jack said he loves doing these mammoth feats of endurance because of the “test of mental fortitude”.

“I do like inspiring people,” he said.

“I like proving people wrong when they go: ‘That can’t be done’.”

“We’re capable of so much more than we think,” he added.

“We’ve just got to push our own perceived limits in our heads.”

Donate to the crew’s fundraiser on JustGiving here: https://www.justgiving.com/team/tuwc