Produced by Nick Hodson of London, England Frank Mildmay, by Captain Marryat. ________________________________________________________________________ Captain Frederick Marryat was born July 10 1792, and died August 8 1848. He retired from the British navy in 1828 in order to devote himself to writing. In the following 20 years he wrote 26 books, many of which are among the very best of English literature, and some of which are still in print. Marryat had an extraordinary gift for the invention of episodes in his stories. He says somewhere that when he sat down for the day's work, he never knew what he was going to write. He certainly was a literary genius. "Frank Mildmay" was published in 1829, the first book to flow from Marryat's pen. It had been written while at sea, during a long search, which Marryat considered ridiculous, for a non-existent island that someone had reported seeing in mid-Atlantic. While writing this book Marryat decided that he would be better employed out of the Navy, writing books. The full title of this book was "The Naval Officer; or, Scenes and Adventures in the life of Frank Mildmay". A similar title might have been applied to at least four others of his books. For people wishing to know how ships were handled in battles and other engagements, from books by an experienced early nineteenth century naval officer, they could not do better than to read them. This e-text was transcribed in 1998 by Nick Hodson, and was reformatted in 2003, and again in 2005. ________________________________________________________________________ FRANK MILDMAY, BY CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT. CHAPTER ONE. These are the errors, and these are the fruits of mis-spending our prime youth at the schools and universities, as we do, either in learning mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned. MILTON. My father was a gentleman, and a man of considerable property. In my infancy and childhood I was weak and sickly, but the favourite of my parents beyond all my brothers and sisters, because they saw that my mind was far superior to my sickly frame, and feared they should never raise me to manhood; contrary, however, to their expectations, I surmounted all these untoward appearances, and attracted much notice from my liveliness, quickness of repartee, and impudence: qualities which have been of much use to me through life.