Peter was the youngest of a family, composed with one exception of boys, and the most ambitious of the lot.  When he was nine years old (he was born in 1703, by the bye), his father, Captain Michael, died, and three years later the oldest son, Oliver, decided to send Peter to his uncle Lord Aylmer to be trained for the service.  Is it far-fetched to assume that Oliver found his small brother something of a handful?  If Peter was one-quarter as pugnacious and foolhardy at twelve as he was at forty, there is small wonder that a young man burdened with the cares of a large estate and an orphaned family would be not unwilling to get rid of him,—­or at least of the responsibility of him.  Their uncle, the Admiral, apparently liked his little Irish nephew, and proceeded to train him for a naval career, with such vigourous success that at fourteen our young hero volunteered for His Majesty’s service,—­a thing, we may take it, which had been the high dream of his boyish life.

And it was real service too.  Boys turned into men very quickly in those days.  In Southern and African waters young Peter saw plenty of action.  He had such adventures as our modern boys sit up at night to read of.  For there were pirates to be encountered then, flesh-and-blood pirates with black flags and the rest of it.  And deep-sea storms meant more in those days of sails and comparatively light vessels than we can even imagine today.  So swiftly did Peter grow up under this stern yet thrilling education with the English colours, that after four short years he was a lieutenant.  And in another six, at an age when most young men are barely standing on the threshold of their life-work, he was posted a full captain and given his first command!

His ship was H.M.S. Grafton, of seventy guns,—­no small honour for a boy of hardly twenty-four,—­and it proved to be no empty honour either.  No sooner had he been posted captain than he was ordered into action.  At that time there were signal and violent differences of opinion between England and other countries,—­notably Spain and France.  Gibraltar was the subject of one of them, it may be recalled.  It was to Gibraltar that Captain Warren and his good ship Grafton were ordered.  And when Sir.  Charles Wager seized that historic bone of contention, Peter was with the fleet that did the seizing.

From that moment he was in the thick of trouble wherever it was to be found, like the dear, daredevil young Irishman that he was!  Just a moment let us pause to try to visualise this youthful adventurer of ours, with the courtly manners, the irrepressible boyish recklessness and the big heart.  Our only authentic descriptions of him are of a Peter Warren many years older; our only even probable likenesses are the same.  But let us take these, and reckoning backward see what a man of such characteristics must have been like in his early twenties.