As is not uncommonly the case, the end of the old life overlapped the beginning of the new. Indeed, the old cannot have consciously come to an end with Marryat for some years. The evidence as to his wishes and hopes is scanty--extraordinarily scanty considering his prominence and that he lived almost into this generation; but what has been made known about him shows that he did not cease to think and work for “the service,” or quite gave up for a long time expecting that he might again hold a command. As an active naval officer, however, his career ended when he resigned the command of the _Ariadne_. Before that date he had written and published “Frank Mildmay,” and had written the “King’s Own.” What the private affairs may have been which induced him to resign his ship does not appear very clearly. Mrs. Ross Church supposes that he wished to devote himself to his duties as equerry to the Duke of Sussex, which hardly appears a sufficient explanation. Perhaps, like many other sailors, he may have had a period of revolt against the routine work, and long absence from friends and family imposed by naval life, and for which there is little compensation in peace time. With a growing family to look after he had a strong attraction to the shore. Then service in peace time cannot have had many temptations to a man who enjoyed excitement as Marryat did. To be sent on “diplomatic duties,” which in practice would mean visits, in the company of His Majesty’s Consuls, to foreign governors, or to be ordered off in winter to look for reefs in the Atlantic, which never existed except in the bemused brains of some merchant skipper, must have been very trying. An experience or two of this kind, coinciding with the success of his first book and the equerryship, would be enough to decide him to try his fortune on shore--all the more as he had private means. Whatever the exact motives may have been, in 1830 he was on shore for good, and established in Sussex House, Hammersmith.