Robert L. Drake

Robert L. Drake was the house name attached to A. L. Burt's Boy Allies of the Navy adventures amid World War I. A. L. Burt issued The Boy Allies Under Two Flags or Sweeping the Enemy from the Sea in 1915; it follows young officers through naval action across several regions. Contemporary title pages style the byline as Ensign Robert L. Drake, lending the series an air of firsthand authority. Research on early juvenile series identifies the writer behind that name as Clair W. Hayes, who also created the parallel Boy Allies of the Army books under his own name. The naval sequence continued with volumes including The Boy Allies on the North Sea Patrol and The Boy Allies Under the Sea, carrying recurring characters Frank Chadwick and Jack Templeton into new campaigns. These fast-moving books belong to a publishing tradition that turned current events into serialized adventure for younger readers. Their authorship also shows how publishers used consistent fictional bylines to make multi-volume series appear unified.