Roger Starbuck

Roger Starbuck was the pen name of Augustus Comstock (born February 14, 1837, in Charlestown, Massachusetts). He moved to New York as a child, left school young to work in printing, briefly tried studying law, and then went to sea. Several sources note that he sailed on whaling voyages before turning to fiction, which helps explain why so many of his stories feel closely tied to ships, sailors, ice, and danger.

During the Civil War, Comstock served as a private in the 5th New York Volunteers and was badly wounded at the Second Battle of Bull Run in 1862. After the war he lived in Brooklyn and wrote full time, producing serials, sketches, poems, and many adventure stories for popular papers and dime-novel publishers. Titles linked to Roger Starbuck include The Golden Harpoon; or, Lost Among the Floes, On the Deep; or, The Missionary's Daughter, and The Mad Skipper.

Bibliographic sources identify him as an American dime-novel author who died in New York on April 26, 1908. Even though he is not widely known today, his work captures the punchy energy of 19th-century popular fiction, especially its taste for sea adventures and cliffhanger storytelling.