"A young man must let his ideas grow, not be continually rooting them up to see how they are getting on.""Fear, born of that stern matron, Responsibility.""If fate means you to lose, give him a good fight anyhow.""It is so much easier to tell intimate things in the dark.""One must choose between Obscurity with Efficiency, and Fame with its inevitable collateral of Bluff.""People don't ever seem to realize that doing what's right is no guarantee against misfortune.""Terrible and sublime thought, that every moment is supreme for some man and woman, every hour the apotheosis of some passion!""There is nothing like an odor to stir memories."
He was born on the Erin's Isle, a three-master owned by his father, a sea captain. Educated at Culford School, he became a mechanical engineer at Richard Moreland & Sons and W. Summerscales & Sons in the City, before going to sea as a marine engineer in 1906. He rose to chief engineer in ships of the Woodfield SS Co.; went to the United States in 1911 and wrote books, afterwards going to sea in ships of the United Fruit Company. During World War I he served in the British Navy as engineer in transports on various ships. While in the navy he met Pauline Khondoff, a Bulgarian refugee. The couple wed in 1920, but divorced in 1932. He was married twice more, first to Beatrice Allender who died in 1952 and then to Dorothy North. After the war, he returned to the United States to live in Roxbury, Connecticut. He was with the United Fruit Co., as chief until 1924, when he turned definitively to writing. In addition to books, he also wrote reviews for The New York Sun and The New York Times.
He wrote several collections of reminiscences; his hobby was making ship models.