#warner might be my favourite biographer of marryat for all the shortcomings of his book (written almost 70 years ago)

[marryat92]

Both Marryat and Conrad had, by their late thirties, amassed wonderful material for books: both felt the desire to write; both spent the latter part of their lives making an entirely new reputation. As Washington Irving wrote to Marryat later: 'You have a glorious field before you, and one in which you cannot have many competitors, as so very few unite the author to the sailor. I think the choosing of the ocean quite a new region of fiction and romance, and to my taste one of the most captivating that could be explored.'

— Oliver Warner, Captain Marryat: A Rediscovery

Sheerness as seen from the Nore, J.M.W. Turner, 1808