Captain Frederick Marryat (1792-1848) was a Royal Navy officer during the Napoleonic War who later went on to write novels drawing on his experiences at sea. His stories are full of action and adventure, as might be expected from a man who served under Captain Lord Cochrane himself. Marryat is considered one of the early pioneers of the sea story and his work influenced many writers of the genre, including C.S. Forester and our beloved PO’B.
Marryat entered the Navy in September 1806, in the Imperieuse commanded by Captain Lord Cochrane. His service as a midshipman in this vessel was to be exciting, cutting out coasting vessels and privateers, storming batteries and taking part in the controversial attack on the French fleet in the Basque Roads, near Rochefort, in 1809. Marryat’s experiences were later the basis of his sea novels – a form he largely invented – and the dashing Cochrane was model for Captain Savage of the Diomede in Peter Simple.
On 30 September 1811 Cochrane commended Marryat for his extreme daring, leading the way aloft during a terrible gale, and during his service Marryat saved an extraordinary number of men from drowning by jumping into the sea to rescue them. As a result, in 1821, he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Humane Society for his gallantry in saving life at sea.
Continuing Naval Career: Lieutenant to Captain
Marryat became a lieutenant on 26 December 1812. He served in the West Indies and North America in the brief Anglo-American war of 1812–14, first in the sloop Espiègle and later in the Newcastle, sharing in the capture of several enemy merchant ships and privateers. Promoted commander on 13 June 1815, he was captain of the sloop Beaver at St. Helena in 1820–21 at the time of Napoleon’s death in exile there, and drew the Emperor’s body on his deathbed.
In 1819, Marryat was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work on adapting Sir Home Popham’s flag signalling system for use by merchant shipping. Known as the ‘Marryat code’, it was used for many years.
In March 1823 Marryat took command of the Larne, serving in the First Burma War. In 1824 he was senior naval officer at Rangoon and in 1825 was naval commander of a river expedition that captured Bassein. Promoted captain that year he returned to England in 1826 in command of the Tees, and was made a Companion of the Bath for his Burma service. His last command was of the Ariadne until 1830.
Literary Career and Later Life
Marryat then left the Navy to pursue a literary career, already well begun with his highly successful naval novel Frank Mildmay in 1829. Thereafter he produced a stream of these and was also a journalist and editor of the Metropolitan Magazine, 1832–35.
While in London his private life was extravagant. On one after-dinner occasion, he swapped his own home, Sussex House, Hampstead, for a much more modest country property at Langham in Norfolk, which, remarkably, he had never seen. Marryat’s lavish lifestyle and entertaining eventually ran through the fortune he earned.
In the early 1840s the breakdown of his marriage and the rise to fame of his friend Charles Dickens coincided with the exhaustion of his resources of naval fiction. Always fond of children, including his own, he changed to writing for them and his Children of the New Forest (1847) is the only one of his novels still very well known and regularly reprinted. Like all his later work it was written at Langham, where he lived and farmed in more modest circumstances, from 1843 to his death.
Documents
Works
Luckily for us, the copyrights on Captain Marryat’s novels have long expired and they are available free! They are very fascinating reading, even more so when one remembers that they were written by someone who had an innate understanding of the world he was writing about because he lived in it.
Frank Mildmay (or The Naval Officer)
Mr. Midshipman Easy
Peter Simple
Full List of eBooks
Text and documents courtesy of the National Maritime Museum. Free eBooks courtesy of Project Gutenberg.
Image: Mr. Midshipman Marryat by James McConnell. Courtesy of The Book Palace.
Dr. Maturin suggests further reading:
Your information on my uncle from many generations ago was a nice addition to the Marryat geneology I am updating. Can you share any web sites, etc I can access to do further research.
Welcome! It’s very exciting to have you comment on my site
As far as research goes, I would definitely recommend browsing the information at the National Maritime Museum (where I got the above information). Aside from that, I’d think reading his books would provide a lot of insight. I’m afraid I don’t have any super secret naval history sites to offer however 
One thing, I’m not sure if you saw this post, but it’s a collection of illustration your great great great… uncle did showing the life of a midshipman at sea. Really fascinating stuff!