Capt. Frederick Marryat 
Newton Forster or The Merchant Service 

Newton Forster is a troubled young man who survives impressment into the Navy, imprisonment in France, and a shipwreck in the West Indies before gaining a post on a British East India Company vessel bound for Asia. Forster faces a thrill a chaptermurder, insanity, press gangs, prison, pirates, treachery, and romance.