About the authors

Frederic B. Hill was a reporter, correspondent and editorial writer for The Baltimore Sun from 1965 to 1985, including tours as bureau chief in London and Paris covering Western Europe and southern Africa. In 1985 and 1986, he served as foreign affairs director to Senator Charles “Mac” Mathias (R., MD). From 1986 to 2006, he helped establish and then lead the office of Special Programs in the Department of State. 

Hill is the author of six books, including Mathias of Maryland: Remembering a Lincoln Republican in the Senate and Ships, Swindlers; Scalded Hogs, the Rise and Fall of the Crooker Shipyard in Bath, Maine; Dereliction of Duty: The Failed Presidency of Donald John Trump; A Flick of Sunshine, The Remarkable Shipwrecked, Marooned, Maritime Adventures and Tragic Fate of an American Original, written with his son, Alexander Jackson Hill; and Beyond the Tides: Classic Tales of Richard Matthews Hallet, a collection of short stories of a popular Maine author and long-time Boothbay Harbor resident. He was co-editor with Stephens Broening of The Life of Kings: The Baltimore Sun and the Golden Age of the American Newspaper. 

He is a member and former president of Maine’s First Ship, an organization that built a reconstruction of the first vessel built by English settlers in North America, at Popham Beach, Maine, in 1607-08, and for ten years was co-director of a leading doubles squash tournament, the Maine/Maryland at Meadow Mill (M4) Doubles Championships. He resides in Maine and Maryland.

Jim Nelson was born and raised in Maine and graduated from UCLA’s film school. Finding that despite being in Southern California, it was a damp, drizzly November in his soul, Jim took the cure Melville recommended and decided to sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. For six years he worked on board traditional sailing ships before launching a writing career as in 1994. He has since written more than thirty works of maritime fiction and history. He is the winner or the American Library Association/William Young Boyd Award and the Naval Order’s Samuel Eliot Morison Award. Nelson has lectured all over the country and appeared on the Discovery Channel, History Channel, National Geographic and BookTV. He and his former shipmate, now wife, Lisa, and the last of their four children, live in Harpswell, Maine, when they are not off sailing.