Frederick Marryat

Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836) is a novel by Frederick Marryat. Inspired by the author's experience as a captain in the Royal Navy, Mr. Midshipman Easy is a tale of bravery, foolishness, and the manifold reasons for men to take to the high seas. Frequently funny, often profound, Marryat's novel is an underappreciated classic of nineteenth century fiction that has been adapted twice for British cinema. "'Then, father, all I have to say is, that I swear...

The Phantom Ship (1839) is a novel by Frederick Marryat. Inspired by the legend of the Flying Dutchman, a fabled ghost ship doomed to sail the seas until the end of time, The Phantom Ship is a tale of adventure and Gothic horror from an author who served for decades in the British Royal Navy. Philip Vanderdecken had always feared this day would come. Raised by his mother in Terneuzen, he had grown accustomed to life without a father. During a voyage...

Informed by Marryat's military service in Canada, this 1844 children's novel is set in the North American wilderness of the 1770s. The Campbell family, stripped of its estate, flees to settle in a new country. They battle forest fires, deadly weather, and hostile Indians in a desperate struggle to survive on their farm.

Reared as a foundling, and apprenticed to an apothecary, Japhet's good looks and matchless talent for lying carry him through the guises of tramp, mountebank, quack doctor, gentleman-about-town, and finally the only son of a wealthy general. Published in 1836, Captain Marryat's picaresque seventh book was his first "landlocked" story.

Alexander Musgrave narrates his own yarn as a legalized pirate, sailing under a letter of marque to harass the enemy. The story includes the capture of a French ship, shark attacks and slavery, and Musgrave's journey into the arms of a beautiful woman-this last (1846) of Marryat's naval stories delivers vintage high-seas adventure.

This 1834 maritime adventure transports the reader to London's fabled port, aboard the lighters that ply the shifting tides of the Thames. Jacob loses both parents, becomes adopted by a wharf owner, and forges friendships with an old lighterman, his son, and their dog. Picaresque adventures catapult him to his place as a gentleman.

Pirates, madness, and murder feature in this early (1832) high-seas thriller. Impressed into the British Navy, troubled young Newton Forster endures imprisonment in France and a shipwreck in the West Indies before gaining post on a British East India Company vessel.