Before passing up a career in law for the writing life, Richard Matthews Hallett lived an exciting life of adventure, that included a stint as a police officer, and as a seaman aboard a schooner bound for Australia. He then trekked across that country and lived by his wits in England for a time before returning to the States. Later, he was a deck officer on warships convoying soldiers and horses across the Atlantic in WW I, and facing U-boat attacks.

Over his life, Hallett wrote several novels and more than 200 short stories that were published in the most widely read magazines of the day, including the Saturday Evening Post, Harper's, Atlantic, Collier's, Everybody's, and American Legion Monthly. The stories gathered here, published in the first half of the twentieth century, include vivid tales of the sea, both in the days of sail and in the midst of war, often built around ship-board tensions and tumult; and stories of Maine and New England and their small town values and rivalries.