Charles Rathbone Low, like so many servants of the East India Company, came from an Anglo-Irish ascendancy family, with estates in county Galway. His grandmother was a daughter of the 4th Viscount Boyne, his grandfather served in H.M. 76th Foot, his father was a Major in the Bengal Native Infantry, and he himself married the daugher of a General. Charles was born at Dublin on 30th October 1837. He entered the East India Company's Indian Navy in 1853 and saw active service againt pirates and slave traders in waters ranging from Zanzibar to the China Seas, only to have his career cut short in 1863 when the Indian Navy was abolished - hence the termina date of the present work. Returning to England, he was appointed the first Librarian (and Assistant Secretary) of the Royal United Services Institution in 1865, leaving the post in 1868 to concentrate on a career as a gentleman author and representative of the past glories of the Indian Navy. Beginning in 1866 and continuing until his d...