Frank Marryat (1826–1855) was an English sailor, artist, and author. He was one of the sons of Captain

Frederick Marryat Captain Frederick Marryat (10 July 1792 – 9 August 1848) was a Royal Navy officer and novelist. He is noted today as an early pioneer of nautical fiction, particularly for his semi-autobiographical novel '' Mr Midshipman Easy'' (1836). He is ...

Service in the Royal Navy

He joined the

Royal Navy The Royal Navy (RN) is the naval warfare force of the United Kingdom. It is a component of His Majesty's Naval Service, and its officers hold their commissions from the King of the United Kingdom, King. Although warships were used by Kingdom ...

at 14 years old as

midshipman A midshipman is an officer of the lowest Military rank#Subordinate/student officer, rank in the Royal Navy, United States Navy, and many Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth navies. Commonwealth countries which use the rank include Royal Cana ...

and made a number of drawings during his service on HMS ''Samarang'' in the

Far East The Far East is the geographical region that encompasses the easternmost portion of the Asian continent, including North Asia, North, East Asia, East and Southeast Asia. South Asia is sometimes also included in the definition of the term. In mod ...

in 1843. He planned to publish these without any accompanying text, but then added text from his own, and colleagues' journals to produce his first book in 1848.

Travels to California and infection by yellow fever

In 1850, he left England for California via Panama with a manservant and three hunting dogs. This provided the material for another book, published in New York in 1855, ''a sportsman-tourist's chronicle of California in the early 1850s: hunting, horse races, bear and bull fights, and an Englishman's bemused comments on social life in San Francisco, Stockton, and the gold fields''. There is also a long and vivid description of the

San Francisco Fire of 1851 The San Francisco Fire of 1851 (May 3–4, 1851) was a catastrophic conflagration that destroyed as much as three-quarters of San Francisco, California. History During the height of the California gold rush, between December 1849 and June 1851 ...

. He had returned to England in 1853, married, and prepared to return with his new bride to California that same year. However, he had contracted yellow fever on board ship, which forced him to cut the trip short and return to England. He died there shortly before his book was published, under the title ''Mountains and Molehills, or Memoirs of a Burnt Journal''.

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Marryat, Frank 1826 births 1855 deaths 19th-century English artists 19th-century English memoirists 19th-century Royal Navy personnel 19th-century British sailors Royal Navy officers English sailors English expatriates in the United States Deaths from yellow fever