Clark Russell joined the British merchant service, made several voyages to India and Australia, and while off the coast of China witnessed the capture of the Taku forts by the combined British and French forces. He retired from the merchant service and took up a literary career. His early seafaring experiences, as well as accounts of historical voyages, provided much of the material for his fifty-seven sea novels. The Two Captains begins: It was one Tuesday in the City of London, in the early part of the century, and the large dining-room of the Mitre tavern was full of hungry men sitting in boxes and giving hoarse notes to their wants. It was a very long room with a very low ceiling. The ceiling was covered with foliage and flying figures, and Mr. Jenkinson, the landlord, believed it was worth a thousand pounds. It was a rich scene of old world life, when citizens wore tail coats and white cravats, when Ludgate was choked with debtors, and when they were hanging men and women in the crowd-blackened thoroughfare opposite the jail whose records are hellish.