Richard Maury

Richard Maury was born on St. David's Island, Bermuda, in 1910, a descendant of pioneering oceanographer and hydrographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. He owned and sailed his first boat at the age of eight, and by the time he was in his early twenties, he had served before the mast in the full-rigged ship "Tusitala," as well as on several tramp freighters of the period. Maury spent most of his working life as a mariner on deepwater vessels. He died in 1998. Jonathan Raban is a Fellow of the Royal...See more

Richard Maury was born on St. David's Island, Bermuda, in 1910, a descendant of pioneering oceanographer and hydrographer Matthew Fontaine Maury. He owned and sailed his first boat at the age of eight, and by the time he was in his early twenties, he had served before the mast in the full-rigged ship "Tusitala," as well as on several tramp freighters of the period. Maury spent most of his working life as a mariner on deepwater vessels. He died in 1998. Jonathan Raban is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the editor of "The Oxford Book of the Sea," and author of ten critically acclaimed books, including "Passage to Juneau." He is the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Heinemann Award for Literature, and received the "New York Times" Editors' Choice for Book of the Year for "Old Glory" and "Bad Land." He has been called (by "The Guardian") "the finest writer afloat since Conrad." See less