Recollections of a Sea Life by a Midshipman of the Last Century

Reminiscences written by a naval officer on half-pay, and originally published in the United Service Journal in 1831 and 1832. They begin with his first appointment as midshipman in 1795, and carry forward as far as 1808. These memoirs include ship-wreck and mutiny off Anticosti Island at the entrance to the St. Lawrence River; the mutiny at Spithead, with many admiring words for the leader of that mutiny, Valentine Joyce; the capture of several French ships; the destruction of the Sewolad by the Implacable and the Centaur; voyages to the East Indies, and the tedium of life blockading the French.

Campbell died before he was able to complete these memoirs. When the editors of the United Service Journal announced his death to their readers, they wrote about his series that "we are satisfied that no person could have perused the articles in question, without feeling that they were in the hands of an officer of talent and experience, and one possessed of excellent taste, judgement, and right feeling in all matters, private or professional."

They have not previously been published in book form. They provide another view of the life described in Frederick Marryat's nautical novels and Basil Hall's autobiographical writings.