Frank Mildmay, His Majesty's Naval Officer — Frederick Marryat

The very first classic naval fiction novel by Capt. Frederick MarryatFrank Mildmay is a rogue and a rascal who cuts a memorable swath as he moves up the ranks of the early nineteenth-century British Royal Navy. Whether seducing pretty girls ashore, braving hurricanes at sea, or scrambling aboard a French privateer with cutlass bared, Mildmay and his adventures live on! Marryat completed his first novel, said to be partly autobiographical, while fitting out his last command, the 28-gun Ariadne. As you take a tour of duty with the intrepid Lieutenant Mildmay, you’ll be following in the footsteps of Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Virginia Woolf, C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, and countless other lovers of nautical fiction through the years who found in Marryat the key to a whole new world. Lord Cochrane himself spoke highly of Marryat, calling him “brave, zealous, intelligent – and even thoughtful.”