David W. (David William) Bone

Born in Glasgow in 1874, David William Bone went to sea as a teenager and built a long career in the Merchant Navy. His early years in sail later shaped The Brassbounder (1910), the novel most often linked with his name.

Bone went on to serve with the Anchor Line, commanded major passenger and transport ships, and eventually became commodore of the fleet. During the First World War he was captain of the Cameronia when she was torpedoed in April 1917; accounts of the disaster credited his seamanship and composure with helping save many of those on board.

Alongside his life at sea, he became a successful writer of novels, sea stories, and memoirs, drawing directly on the working life of sailors rather than treating the subject romantically from a distance. He later lived for many years in Helensburgh and died in 1959.