Thomas Marryat was born in London in the year 1730. He had a retentive memory and a great love for letters from an early age. He read and spoke Latin with ease, and it is said that he could read any Greek author, even Lycophron, at nine years old. Coming of a long line of Puritan ancestry, he was intended for the dissenting ministry, but literature, the muses and the pleasures of the town had g...