author
W. E. Carlton
A little-known early 20th-century storyteller, this author is remembered today for a sea-going adventure that captures the danger and duty of the rum-running era on Cape Cod. Very little biographical information survives, which only adds to the mystery around the name on the title page.
1 Audiobook
The coast guardsman
by W. E. Carlton
About the author
W. E. Carlton is the credited author of The Coast Guardsman, an adventure short story from the early 20th century. Project Gutenberg lists that title under the name "Carlton, W. E.," but the source provides no fuller biography, and other reliable literary references located here do not add confirmed personal details.
Because so little can be verified, it is safest to describe Carlton as an obscure author whose surviving reputation rests mainly on that one known work. The Coast Guardsman is set on Cape Cod during the rum-running era and centers on a young surfman whose courage and sense of duty drive the story.
There are records online for people named William Edward Carlton, including a minister by that name, but the sources reviewed here do not confirm that any of them are the same person as the author of The Coast Guardsman. For that reason, this overview avoids attaching unverified life details to the writer.