Small white classical-style marble bust on a round socle, on a square black marble base. The sitter is shown clean-shaven, with short hair and side-whiskers.

Marryat came to fame as a writer of sea novels including 'Mr Midshipshipman Easy' , 'Masterman Ready' and many others based in part on his own very active career in the Navy, which began in 1806 just after Trafalgar and continued to 1830. By then he had already begun the journalism and writing that made him, it has been said, the best- known novelist between Jane Austen and Dickens. The latter, however, eclipsed him just at the point his own limited nautical vein was becoming exhausted. Financial extravagance (he ran through two inherited fortunes and the one his writing had earned) led to him spending his later years farming at Langham in Norfolk and writing novels specifically for children. Of these the only one that has endured, remained continually in print, and preserved general knowledge of his name is 'Children of the New Forest' (1847). While at sea he gained several awards for life-saving, also a considerable income from the signal flag code that he developed and published in 1817, and which came into general use thereafter.