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Captain Frederick Marryat (10 July 17929 August 1848) was a British Royal Navy officer, novelist, and an acquaintance of Charles Dickens, noted today as an early pioneer of the sea story. He is now known particularly for the semi-autobiographical novel ''Mr Midshipman Easy'' and his children's novel ''The Children of the New Forest'', and for a widely used system of maritime flag signalling, known as Marryat's Code. ==Early life and naval career== Marryat was born in London, the son of Joseph Marryat, a "merchant prince" and member of Parliament and his American wife Charlotte, née von Geyer.〔J. K. Laughton, ‘Marryat, Frederick (1792–1848)’, rev. Andrew Lambert, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 A daughter of Frederick Geyer of Boston, Mass., Charlotte was of German descent and one of the first women admitted to membership of the Royal Horticultural Society. She died in 1854.〕 After trying to run away to sea several times, Marryat was permitted to enter the Royal Navy in 1806 as a midshipman on board HMS ''Imperieuse'', a frigate commanded by Lord Cochrane (who would later serve as inspiration for both Marryat and other authors). Marryat's time aboard the ''Imperieuse'' included action off the Gironde, the rescue of a fellow midshipman who had fallen overboard, captures of many ships off the Mediterranean coast of Spain, and the capture of the castle of Montgat. When the ''Imperieuse'' shifted to operations in the Scheldt, in 1809, Marryat contracted malaria, and returned to England on the 74-gun HMS ''Victorious''. After recuperating, Marryat returned to the Mediterranean in the 74-gun HMS ''Centaur'', and again saved a shipmate by leaping into the sea after him. He then sailed as a passenger to Bermuda in the 64-gun HMS ''Atlas'', and from thence to Halifax, Nova Scotia on the schooner HMS ''Chubb''. Once there he joined the 32-gun frigate HMS ''Aeolus'', on 27 April 1811. A few months later, Marryat again earned distinction by leading the effort to cut away the ''Aeolus'' Marryat then turned to scientific studies. He invented a lifeboat (which earned him both a gold medal from the Royal Humane Society and the nickname "Lifeboat"). Based on his experience in the Napoleonic Wars escorting merchant ships in convoys, he developed a practical, widely used system of maritime flag signalling known as Marryat's Code. During his scientific studies he described in 1818 a new gastropod genus ''Cyclostrema'' with the type species ''Cyclostrema cancellatum'' Marryat, 1818. In 1819 Marryat married Catherine Shairp, with whom he had four sons (of whom only the youngest, Frank, outlived him) and seven daughters (including Florence, a prolific novelist and his biographer; Emilia, a writer of moralist adventure novels in her father's vein; and Augusta, also a writer of adventure fiction). Around this time Marryat collaborated with George Cruikshank the caricaturist to produce ''The New Union Club'', an extravagant satire against abolitionism.〔See Temi Odumosu's article in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.〕 In 1820 Marryat commanded the sloop and temporarily commanded HMS ''Rosario'' for the purpose of bringing back to England the despatches announcing the death of Napoleon on Saint Helena. He also took the opportunity to make a sketch of Napoleon's body on his deathbed, which was later published as a lithograph. His artistic skills were modest, but his sketches of shipboard life above and below deck have considerable charm that offsets their crudities.〔National Maritime Museum (UK), (Capt. Marryat's framed and original sketch of Napoleon Bonaparte after his death at St Helena )〕 In 1823 he was appointed to HMS ''Larne'' and took part in an expedition against Burma in 1824. During this expedition, which resulted in large losses due to disease, he was promoted to command the 28-gun HMS ''Tees'', which gave him the rank of post-captain. He was back in England in 1826. In 1829 he was commanding the frigate HMS ''Ariadne'' on a mission to search for shoals around the Madeira and Canary Islands. This was an uninspiring exercise, and between that and the recent publication of his first novel, ''The Naval Officer'', he decided to resign his commission in November 1830 and take up writing full-time. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「Frederick Marryat」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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