Before Patrick O'Brian, before C. S. Forester, there was Frederick Marryat. His novels defined the genre and were admired by literary luminaries as diverse as Conrad, Woolf, and Hemingway. Peter Simple, the story of a young naif in Nelson's navy, is Marryat's signature work. Marked by memorable characters, a comic edge, and the kind of unerring detail that comes only from first-hand experience, this is a true masterpiece of the Golden Age of Sail.