Frederick Marryat

Frederick Marryat (London, 1792 – Langham, Norfolk, 1848) was a Royal Navy officer and English novelist. He lived through the Napoleonic Wars and wrote in English. Today he is remembered as an early pioneer of the sea novel, a genre that portrayed shipboard life in close detail. His books found a wide readership in his time and are still read for their firsthand view of the sea.

Born in Westminster into a family of Huguenot descent, Marryat, whose father was an MP and slave owner, tried to run away to sea several times before entering the navy in 1806 as a midshipman aboard the frigate Impérieuse, under Lord Cochrane. He served off the coast of Spain, in North America during the War of 1812, and later in Burma. He earned a reputation for courage, especially for risking his life to rescue men who had fallen overboard, which won him a gold medal from the Royal Humane Society.

Around 1830 he left active service to write full time. His first novel, Frank Mildmay (1829), was followed by more than thirty others. Drawing on his own years at sea, his stories blend naval action with family plots and the social life of the period. Mr Midshipman Easy (1836) was his greatest success. He travelled to Canada and the United States, where his critical account of American society in a travel diary made him many enemies.

His legacy lies in his role as a forerunner of the nautical novel. The genre he helped establish shaped later writers such as C. S. Forester and Patrick O'Brian, and it was admired by figures like Joseph Conrad and Mark Twain. He also wrote The Children of the New Forest, a children's novel published in 1847. His health was never robust, and he died at Langham in 1848, shortly after the death of his eldest son.