William McFee

Born in London on June 15, 1881, William McFee was an English writer best remembered for sea stories. Before literature became his full-time work, he trained and worked as a mechanical engineer, then went to sea as a marine engineer in 1906.

That practical life deeply shaped his writing. After moving to the United States in 1911, he continued working aboard ships, including with the United Fruit Company, and also served in the Royal Navy as an engineer during World War I. He eventually settled in Connecticut and turned fully to writing in the 1920s, bringing uncommon technical detail and lived experience to his fiction, memoirs, and reviews.

McFee also wrote for newspapers including The New York Sun and The New York Times, published an autobiography, In the First Watch, and received an honorary Master of Arts degree from Yale in 1936. He became a United States citizen in 1925 and died in New Milford, Connecticut, on July 2, 1966.