The King's Own
by Frederick Marryat
William Seymour grows up on shipboard in the Royal Navy, after his father is hanged during the mutiny at the Nore (1797), and later, he is impressed into the crew of a daring smuggler. This amusing and exciting novel blends in the classic true tale of an English captain who deliberately lost his frigate on a lee shore, in order to wreck a French line-of-battle ship.