James L. Nelson is a former professional mariner, having worked aboard such sailing ships as Lady Washington and "HMS" Rose. He is the author of seventeen works of maritime fiction and history, and has won the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award for top military fiction and the Naval Order's Samuel Eliot Morison Award for best work of naval history. He currently lives in Harpswell, Maine, with his former shipmate, now wife Lisa and their four children.
