Edward Frederick Knight

Edward Frederick Knight was an English yachtsman, travel writer, barrister, soldier, and war correspondent whose voyages supplied some of his best-known books. The Cruise of the Alerte recounts his 1889 expedition to Trindade in the South Atlantic, where he and his companions searched for a legendary treasure and recorded the island’s difficult landing conditions. Its fuller title describes the work as a narrative of that search. The Falcon On The Baltic follows a very different craft, a three-ton yacht sailed from Hammersmith toward Copenhagen through the North Sea and Baltic approaches. W. H. Allen first published that Baltic journey in 1889, while later Longmans editions kept the voyage in circulation. Knight’s practical knowledge also informed his manual Sailing. His brisk accounts combine navigation, provisioning, weather, landscape, and encounters ashore. Arthur Ransome drew on Knight’s sailing books and on his description of Trindade, while Erskine Childers used the Baltic voyage as background material for his own maritime fiction.