Captain Frederick Hoffman

He is known for A Sailor of King George, a book published in 1901 from journals covering his naval service between 1793 and 1814. The work presents his experiences as a Royal Navy officer during a long stretch of conflict and has remained the basis of his reputation as an author.

Available source material suggests he entered the Navy in October 1793 and later retired with the rank of captain. A biographical entry in A Naval Biographical Dictionary and the published introduction to A Sailor of King George both portray him as a career naval officer whose writing is valued for its direct, personal view of service, battle, and everyday shipboard life.

Little else about his personal life is easy to confirm from the sources reviewed here, and I could not verify a reliable portrait image from a page clearly dedicated to him. For readers, though, his appeal is clear: he writes from lived experience, and his journal-based memoir captures the texture of naval history in a vivid, grounded way.