Frank Mildmay, by Captain Marryat.
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Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848.
He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to
writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are
among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still
in print.
Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his
stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he
never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary
genius.
"Frank Mildmay" was published in 1829, the first book to flow from
Marryat's pen. It had been written while at sea, during a long search,
which Marryat considered ridiculous, for a non-existent island that
someone had reported seeing in mid-Atlantic. While writing this book
Marryat decided that he would be better employed out of the Navy,
writing books. The full title of this book was "The Naval Officer; or,
Scenes and Adventures in the life of Frank Mildmay". A similar title
might have been applied to at least four others of his books. For
people wishing to know how ships were handled in battles and other
engagements, from books by an experienced early nineteenth century naval
officer, they could not do better than to read them.
This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted
in 2003, and again in 2005.
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