Perhaps the most popular British hero was the legendary rear-admiral, Lord Horatio Nelson. Nelson died in 1805 at the moment of his greatest victory— the Battle of Trafalgar—and became a figure of mythic proportion.

Another great hero was Captain Lord Cochrane. The adventurous Cochrane became famous when his ship, the Flying Pallas captured four richly laden Spanish galleons off the Azores, and the prize-money made every member of his crew a rich man. In 1806, a fourteen-year-old midshipman, Frederick Marryat, signed on with Lord Cochrane’s next command, the frigate Impérieuse. Marryat made lieutenant in 1814. The next year he was promoted to commander. From 1820 to 1822 Marryat commanded the sloop Beaver which, among other duties, cruised off St. Helena, in the South Atlantic, to guard against Napoleon’s escape from his second forced exile from France. He rose to captain and his later posts included an appointment as Senior Naval Officer in Burma. Because of Frederick Marryat’s successes in Asia, the Crown bestowed upon him the C.B. (Companion, Order of the Bath), a high honor. Altogether, Captain Marryat saw action in fifty battles.

In 1829, Marryat was still serving in the Royal Navy as captain of the Adriade when he wrote his first novel, Frank Mildmay or The Naval Officer. He had previously published a book of ship’s flag signals and a polemic calling for the abolition of the impressment of sailors. Marryat’s fiction was such a success that he quit the Navy to devote himself to writing. Over a nineteen-year writing career, Marryat authored 22 novels or books of stories. His early writings were nearly all set on or around the sea. Most of his later works were adventure stories intended for young people. He journeyed to America and, in 1839, published a widely read, six-volume, rather acerbic, account of his travel experiences. Marryat died in 1848 at the age of 56.

Marryat’s writing followed notable examples of the sea-story genre by Daniel Defoe and Sir Walter Scott. In turn, his writing influenced Herman Melville and Joseph Conrad and—in our time—C.S. Forester, Alexander Kent, and Patrick O’Brian. What made Marryat different than some of the aforementioned writers was that he lived the adventures about which he wrote. Marryat had skylarked in the rigging with other midshipman, he had heard the roar of the cannon, and he had commanded a surging man-of-war into battle. Lord Cochrane, the first naval captain under whom Marryat served, was the model for Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey. But Marryat was there first. His Midshipman Jack Easy was the first fictional character modeled after Lord Cochrane.

Patrick O’Brian’s phenomenally popular Aubrey/Maturin series of historical novels has reawakened interest in this venerable genre of English literature—nautical fiction. As readers explore this realm, they will find that Marryat is still well worth reading. His value is not just in the perfectly authentic lore of the navy of wooden ships, present in every page of his books. Marryat’s sharp wit, love of word play, sense of irony, and interest in the strange and the scandalous are evident throughout his works.

ALEXANDER G. SKUTT

PREFATORY NOTE

by R. BRIMLEY JOHNSON from the 1896 edition

PRE-EMINENT among the kindly, good-humoured portraits that hang in Marryat’s long gallery of fun stands “equality Jack,” Mr Midshipman Easy. The critical reader to-day, quoting the science of heredity as taught in continental fiction, may smile at the absurd production of so shrewd a youth from such thoroughly imbecile parents.