Dicky Beaumont — Brian Smith

When little Dicky Beaumont visits HMS Victory and is shown the spot where Admiral Nelson died his mind is made up: he wants to join the navy! Some years later he has become a midshipman in the Royal Navy. His ships sets sail for the Far East. A pleasant and interesting visit to Hong Kong is followed by the pukka perils posed by rapacious Malay pirates who infest the ocean, robbing, enslaving and murdering peaceful merchants and travellers. Dicky and his shipmates must face up to a nightmarish menace or fail and perish.Arthur Lee Knight (1852 - 7 Jul 1944) was a popular author of adventure books in the late 19th and early 20th century. Around 1868 he joined the Royal Navy at the age of sixteen as a junior midshipman, where he served on the 51-gun screw frigate HMS Forte.Having been a midshipman in the navy he was familiar with life in the navy and many of the episodes in his novels - such as hunting Arab slave traders - are clearly events he experienced himself and give unique insight into the world and people in the Victorian age. His readable and often racy stories are characterized by authentic navy language of the time and evocative descriptions of seascapes, distant countries and unusual people.